Things grand and simple of their nature are possessed, as you know, of a very subtle flavour. The larger music, the more majestic lengths of verse called epics, the exact in sculpture, the classic drama, the most absolute kinds of wine, require a perfect harmony of circumstance for their appreciation. Whatever is strong, poignant, and immediate in its effect is not so difficult to suit; farce, horror, rage, or what not, these a man can find in the arts, even when his mood may be heavy or disturbed; just as (to take their parallel in wines) strong Beaune will always rouse a man. But that which is cousin to the immortal spirit, and which has, so to speak, no colour but mere light, that needs for its recognition so serene an air of abstraction and of content as makes its pleasure seem rare in this troubled life, and causes us to recall it like a descent of the gods.

For who, having noise around him, can strike the table with pleasure at reading the Misanthrope, or in mere thirst or in fatigue praise Chinon wine? Who does not need for either of these perfect things Recollection, a variety of according conditions, and a certain easy Plenitude of the Mind?

So it is with the majesty of Plains, and with the haunting power of their imperial roads.

169

FUGUE

All you that have had your souls touched at the innermost, and have attempted to release yourselves in verse and have written trash--(and who know it)--be comforted. You shall have satisfaction at last, and you shall attain fame in some other fashion--perhaps in private theatricals or perhaps in journalism. You will be granted a prevision of complete success, and your hearts shall be filled--but you must not expect to find this mood on the Emilian Way when it is raining.

All you that feel youth slipping past you and that are desolate at the approach of age, be merry; it is not what it looks like from in front and from outside. There is a glory in all completion, and all good endings are but shining transitions. There will come a sharp moment of revelation when you shall bless the effect of time. But this divine moment--- it is not on the Emilian Way in the rain that you should seek it.

All you that have loved passionately and have torn your hearts asunder in disillusions, do not imagine that things broken cannot be mended by the good angels. There is a kind of splice called 'the long splice' which makes a cut rope seem what it was before; it is even stronger than before, and can pass through a block. There will descend upon you a blessed hour when you will be convinced as by a miracle, and you will suddenly understand the redintegratio amoris (amoris redintegratio, a Latin phrase). But this hour you will not receive in the rain on the Emilian Way.

Here then, next day, just outside a town called Borgo, past the middle of morning, the rain ceased.