“Saith not your creed thus? Since Adam tasted the fruit—”
“Of a knowledge forbidden.”
“So is all knowledge—of things higher than we can attain to. To aspire—and never reach—that is the misery of humanity.” And the speaker again buried his face in his hands.
“I understand you, my brother;” said Boëmo, after a pause. “I have been to blame in suffering you to pursue your studies in solitude. Knowing nothing of the outer world, you have wrought but in view of that ideal which, to every true artist, becomes more glorious and inaccessible as he gazes—as he advances. You despond, because you have labored in vain after perfection. Is it not so?”
“I have mistaken myself;” answered Tartini; “you have mistaken me. It was cruel in you to persuade me I was an artist.”
“And who tells you you are not?”
“My own judgment—my own heart.”
“It deceives you, then.”
“It does not,” cried Tartini, with sudden energy, and starting up with such violence that the worthy monk was alarmed. “It is you who have deceived me. You have taught me to flatter myself; to imagine I could accomplish something; to thirst for what was never to be mine. You have pointed me to a goal toward which I have toiled and panted—in vain—while it receded in mockery. You have given me wishes which are to prove my everlasting curse. Yes,”—he continued, striking his forehead, “my curse. What doom can be more horrible than mine?”
“You have but passed,” answered Boëmo, mildly, “though the trial of every soul gifted by Heaven with a true perception of the great and the beautiful.”