 struggle. Raphael stood and watched him with a sad sneer.
'Well!—you have sold your fancied personality dear! How many dead men?.... Nine.... Eleven! Conceited fellow! Who told you that your one life was worth the eleven which you have taken?'
Bran went up to the corpse—perhaps from its sitting posture fancying it still living—smelt the cold cheek, and recoiled with a mournful whine.
'Eh? That is the right way to look at the phenomena, is it? Well, after all, I am sorry for you.... almost like you.... All your wounds in front, as a man's should be. Poor fop! Lais and Thais will never curl those dainty ringlets for you again! What is that bas-relief upon your shield? Venus receiving Psyche into the abode of the gods!.... Ah! you have found out all about Psyche's wings by this time.... How do I know that? And yet, why am I, in spite of my common sense—if I have any—talking to you as you, and liking you, and pitying you, if you are nothing now, and probably never were anything? Bran! What right had you to pity him without giving your reasons in due form, as Hypatia would have done? Forgive me, sir, however—whether you exist or not, I cannot leave that collar round your neck for these camp-wolves to convert into strong liquor.'
And as he spoke, he bent down, and detached, gently enough, a magnificent necklace.
'Not for myself, I assure you. Like Ate's golden apple, it shall go to the fairest. Here, Bran!' And he wreathed the jewels round the neck of the mastiff, who, evidently exalted in her own eyes by the burden, leaped and barked forward again, taking, apparently as a matter of course, the road back towards Ostia, by which they had come thither from the sea. And as he followed, careless where he went, he continued talking to himself aloud after the manner of restless self-discontented men.
....'And then man talks big about his dignity and his intellect, and his heavenly parentage, and his aspirations after the unseen, and the beautiful, and the infinite—and everything else unlike himself. How can he prove it? Why, these poor blackguards lying about are very fair specimens of humanity.—And how much have they been bothered since they were born with aspirations after anything
