from it in its exciting properties.
Pallas.
Is life, then, to resolve itself for us into a chain of exhilarating pangs?
Æsculapius.
Life will now be for you, for all of us, a perpetual combat with a brine that half supports, half drags us under; a continual creeping and balancing on a chamois path around the forehead of a precipice. A headache will be the breaking of a twig, a fever a stone that gives way beneath your foot, to lose the use of an organ will be to let the alpenstock slip out of your starting fingers. And the excitement, and be sure the happiness, of existence will be to protract the struggle as long as possible, to push as far as you can along the dwindling path, to keep the supports and the alleviations of your labour
about you as skilfully as you can, and in the fuss and business of the little momentary episodes of climbing to forget as long and as fully as may be the final and absolutely unavoidable plunge. [A pause, during which Euterpe sinks upon the green sward.]
Æsculapius.
I have unfolded before you a scheme of philosophical activity. Are you not gratified?
Pallas.
Euterpe will learn to be gratified, Æsculapius, but she had not reflected upon the plunge. If she will take my counsel, she will continue to avoid doing so. [Euterpe rises, and approaches Pallas, who continues, to Æsculapius.] I am with you in recommending to her a constant consideration of the momentary episodes of