The young man sighed. He had no such plan of life.
“It will be a moment’s pain,” the other went on. “But thy honor and her peace are at stake. I charge thee”—he half rose in his earnestness—“I charge thee to let the girl alone! Remember that one day thou wilt have to lie as I lie here now, all earthly passion burned to ashes, and only the record of thy conscience to support, or cast thee down.”
“Be tranquil!” said Don Claudio faintly, and bowed his face into his hands. “I will obey.”
The old man sank back upon his pillow with a murmured word of blessing, and looked out at the violet sky. For a while he remained silent. Then he spoke again, as if soliloquizing.
“The unfathomable universe! The baffling problem! Only the shades of night and of life reveal something of the mystery to us. For eighty years I have studied life from every side. I was hungry to know. And the more I learned of any subject the more clearly I perceived the vastness of my own ignorance. I tried in vain to grasp the plan of it all. I built up theories, fitting into them the facts I knew. Sometimes the mosaic grew to show a pattern; and then, just as I began to rejoice, all became confusion again. I was Tantalus. Again and again the universe held its solution before my soul. Only a line more, and it was mine! Yet it was forever snatched away.”
He was silent a little while; then resumed: “In one of those moments of disappointment I recollected a text of the Hebrew Bible taught me in my childhood: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. When I learned it, two paths of life were opening out before my mind. One was like a hidden rivulet, flowing ever in lowly places, seeking ever the lowest place, refreshing, beneficent. The other was like a mountain path, and a star shone over it. I chose the mountain path. It was often steep and hard, and the star recedes as you climb. But the air on those heights is sometimes an elixir. We had a song at home:—
‘Sweet is the path that leads to what we love.’
How many a time I sang it to keep my courage up!
“In that moment of recollection I asked myself if I might not have more surely attained to what I sought by taking the lowlier way, if the supernatural might not have aided material science, as imagination aids in the mathematics. What means the story of the tree of knowledge and the tree of life? Many of those old tales contain a golden lesson. We do not study the past enough; and therefore human life becomes a series of beginnings without visible results. There are a few centuries of progress, something is learned, something gained, a clearer light seems to announce the dawn of some great day, and men begin to extol themselves; and then a shadowy hand sweeps the board clean, and the boasters disappear, they and their achievements. Perhaps out of each fading cycle God gathers up a few from destruction. Many are called, but few chosen, said the King. For the others the story of Sisyphus was told.”
Again there was a pause; and again he spoke: