, or show it heaving.
    Moreover pathos is a tide: often it carries the awakener of it off his feet,
and whirls him over and over, armour and all in ignominious attitudes of
helpless prostration, whereof he may well be ashamed in the retrospect. We
cannot quite preserve our dignity when we stoop to the work of calling forth
tears. Moses had probably to take a nimble jump away from the rock after that
venerable Law-giver had knocked the water out of it.
    However, it was imperative in his mind that he should be sure he had the
power to move her.
    He began: clumsily at first, as yonder gauntleted knight attempting the
briny handkerchief:
    »What are we! We last but a very short time. Why not live to gratify our
appetites? I might really ask myself why. All the means of satiating them are at
my disposal. But no: I must aim at the highest: - at that which in my blindness
I took for the highest. You know the sportsman's instinct, Lætitia; he is not
tempted by the stationary object. Such are we in youth, toying with happiness,
leaving it, to aim at the dazzling and attractive.«
    »We gain knowledge,« said Lætitia.
    »At what cost!«
    The exclamation summoned self-pity to his aid, and pathos was handy.
    »By paying half our lives for it and all our hopes! Yes, we gain knowledge,
we are the wiser; very probably my value surpasses now what it was when I was
happier. But the loss! That youthful bloom of the soul is like health to the
body; once gone, it leaves cripples behind. Nay, my friend and precious friend,
these four fingers I must retain. They seem to me the residue of a wreck: you
shall be released shortly: absolutely, Lætitia, I have nothing else remaining. -
We have spoken of deception: what of being undeceived? - when one whom we adored
is laid bare, and the wretched consolation of a worthy object is denied to us.
No misfortune can be like that. Were it death, we could worship still. Death
would be preferable. But may you be spared to know a situation in which the
comparison with your inferior is forced on you to your disadvantage and your
loss because of your generously giving up your whole heart to the custody of
some shallow, light-minded, self --! ... we will not deal in epithets. If I were
to find as many bad names for the serpent as there are spots on
