Othmar

by Ouida

'For ordinary mortals-yes. But genius is accompanied by the Parcæ. It cannot escape them. Men may kill the body of Chatterton, but they cannot prevent the dead boy being greater than they.'

'I think your project cruel,' said Othmar. 'If you go to this child, or bring her here, you will interfere unwarrantably with her peace and quietude, you will take her out of her sphere; and you can never make a déclassée happy. Melville is quite right.'

'A déclassée! My dear Otho, what a very conventional reply. A déclassée is a person uprooted from her own sphere, to be placed in, or to long to be placed in, one for which she is not the least adapted. Genius is much more than adapted, it is armed in advance for any world it choose to take as its own. Rachel was an unlettered and unwashed Jewess, and Desclée was a tattered little Bohemian: but the one ruled the world, and the other made it weep like a child!'

'But I do not know why you should suppose this little girl on her island is necessarily destined to possess genius?'

'It is in her face, and it would be amusing to discover it. It would give one a Marco Polo sort of feeling.'

'It is a dangerous kind of exploration. You cannot tell what mischief may not come out of it.'

'And you do not understand that the supreme charm of a caprice lies precisely in never knowing in the least what one may come out of it.'

'But where your toys are human souls——'

'There are no such things as human souls. It is an exploded expression. There are only conglomerates of gases and tissues, moved by automatic action, and adhering together for a few years, more or less. That is the new creed. It is not an exhilarating one, but il en vaut bien un autre.'

'All this does not explain why you have taken a fancy to disturb the destiny of a little girl whom you have seen once in a boat.'