"Illud quod cecidit forte, id arte ut corrigas."
"The freewill, the reason, and the power of self-command, struggle perpetually with an array of chance incidents, of mechanical forces, of material causes, beyond foresight or control, but not beyond skilful management. This gives a delicate zest and point to life, which it would surely want if we had the power to frame it as we would. We did not make the world, and are not responsible for its state; but we can make life a fine art, and, taking things as we find them, like wise men, mould them as may best serve our own ends."
"We are not all wise, your Eminence, and the ends that some of us make our aim are far beyond our reach."
"I was ever moderate in my desires," said the Cardinal with a smile; "I shoot at none of these high-flying game. I am content to live from day to day, and leave the future to the gods; in the meantime sweetening life as I can with some pleasing toys, here and there, to relish it."
"You have read Don Quixote, Eminence," said Inglesant; "and no doubt hold him to have been mad."
"He was mad, doubtless," replied the Cardinal smiling.
"I am mad, like him," replied the other.
"I understand you," said the Cardinal; "it is a noble madness, from which we inferior natures are free; nevertheless, it may be advisable for a time to consult some worldly physician, that by his help this nobleness may be preserved a little longer upon earth and among men."
"No worldly physician knows the disease, much less the cure," said Inglesant. "Don Quixote died in his bed at last, talked down by petty common-place, acknowledging his madness, and calling his noble life a mistake; how much more shall I, whose life has been the more ignoble for some transient gleams of splendour which have crossed its path in vain! The world is too strong for me, and heaven and its solution of life's enigma too far off."
"There is no solution, believe me," said the Cardinal, "no solution of life's enigma worth the reading. But suppose there be, you are more likely to find it at Rome than here. Put off that monk's dress, and come with me to Rome. What solution can you hope to find, brooding on your own heart, on this narrow plot of grass, shut in by lofty walls? You, and natures like yours, make this great error; you are moralizing and speculating upon what life ought to be, instead of taking it as it is; and in the meantime it slips by you, and you are nothing, and life is gone. I have heard, and you doubtless, in a fine concert of viols, extemporary descant upon a thorough bass in the Italian manner, when each performer in turn plays such variety of descant, in concordance to the bass, as his skill and present invention may suggest to him. In this manner of play the consonances invariably fall true upon a given note, and every succeeding note of the ground is met, now in the unison or octave, now in the concords, preserving the melody throughout by the laws of motion and sound. I have thought that this is life. To a solemn bass of mystery and of the unseen, each man plays his own descant as his taste or fate suggests; but this manner of play is so governed and controlled by what seems a fatal necessity, that all melts into a species of harmony; and even the very discords and dissonances, the wild passions and deeds of men, are so attempered and adjusted that without them the entire piece would be incomplete. In this way I look upon life as a spectacle, 'in theatro ludus.' Have you sat so long that you are tired already of the play?"