A chapter here omitted
CHAPTER VII
The days flew away, all happy and free from care.
One evening, after dinner, Virginius asked me to take a walk with him. We strolled into the clear night, and through the grounds that lay behind the house. This brought us to the outskirts of the city, and the road led up a gentle hillside toward the forest, that bounded this side of the city for many miles.
He led me into it, and its wonderful soft beauty descended on the spirit, and brought a feeling half of sadness unmixed with pain. Indeed, to be sad in heaven is a luxury—one of the most delicate pleasures it can give.
Along the winding paths and mossy banks the faintest glow of light was shining. It now touched the sleeping flower-bells and the blades of grass, whitened the dark barks of trees, and lit upon the forest brooks that rippled and clattered in the silence with an abandon all their own.
We walked on, each occupied by thoughts, sweet perhaps as sad, till at last, throwing himself down on a bank that sloped towards a branching rivulet, he spoke.
“Genius, I am going to tell you something. Perhaps the world will laugh—it has ever laughed when truth was spoken—but, be that as it may, you can but repeat with truthfulness and pure simplicity what you have heard me say. I have fought many years for the earth, have undergone great hardships for it, been true to it through thick and thin, pitied it, striven for it, respected its suffering. I do not say this in order to extol my own hard labours. Why should I? Others like myself are working and have worked—it is our duty. But now I am going to tell you a little of its history. I force it upon no one. I tell it you, you will repeat it to others; whether they think about it or laugh at it, it is not for me to say. But if they think, they will not laugh, of that you may rest assured.
“Long ago, in the ages long before man was ever known upon the earth, the spirit world moved and lived. From eternity into eternity, so the great wave ran, just as it ever has and will do. Man cannot grasp it, no more than a lifeless seed can understand the flower it brings to light and life. We were happy, in that half-unconscious youth that clings through eternity. Springing into life and form and power by our own strength and guiding intellect, glorious and true in every conception, with other life springing up around us, giving and taking, now one thing, now another, a mist, a wraith, unconsciousness of feeling or of form, then again resplendent, hard or brilliant, full of consciousness or life. And so the ages rolled in this corner of space in which we lived. Sometimes we would roam abroad as now into the far, far fields of space, ever with that courteous interchange of hospitality which is the birthright of all our race. We were friends, friends as only those born as gods can ever be. To live with us was to love and to respect. But this has nothing to do with humanity, I must advance.