“For each man there is a door to happiness,” said the voice in his heart; “the door is shut, but the key is in the door.”
“Yes, the key is in the door,” said he. “I could not have seen the key had I not power to open.”
Suddenly, in the calm of his heart, the young man willed to behold God and to attain supreme joy, and he knew that the Vision would be vouchsafed to him. But just as he was about to see that which he desired to behold, the Devil, in the shape of a crow, flew across the sky of his soul and alighted in his heart. The lake at eve was ruffled, and a whisper like a cold night breeze from the east sped along the surface of it and said, “You will find the true bride for your heart, but does not that mean you must renounce this earthly beauty who has just crowned the happiness of your youth? You will become as a little child and begin life again, and forego all the honour that your years and wealth have brought you. If you see God once, nothing less than God will ever satisfy you, and your eyes, having looked on that radiance, will find the world intolerably grey.”
Then a great terror sprang up in him like two contrary winds born together in a wood, and it shook his spirit. His soul was stirred up from the bottom so that it lost all its purity, and he prayed, “Oh, Lord, do not show thyself lest nothing hereafter give me joy: it is my will, take this cup from me.” The prayer was heard, and the white robe of his transfiguration was caught up into the heavens again.
He saw not the Vision.
He saw not the Vision, but since that day he cannot be satisfied by anything other than it.
So it happened that on his marriage eve he fell from the dizzy heights of happiness and became a man of sorrow. He passed, as it were, out of the favour of God. His estate decayed a little, but even the great wealth which remained was but barren gold. His mind and body grew infirm. With his bride he had no happiness. He lost the good opinion of the world, and those who once were friends pointed at him and said, “There goes a failure, a man not yet of middle age, but disillusioned and crusty.”
The man is now spending the rest of his days and he goes sadly indeed. No other opportunity has come, and he knows in himself he will never be so near again. He has become a lonely man, one who prefers his own company, and likes to look upon the sky, or at the wild things in the woods. He always appears as if he were looking for something he has lost. His eyes are wistful and sorrow—charged, his step heavy, his thoughts slow. He comes nearest to happiness on cloudy days of autumn when he attunes himself to Nature. Then he has quiet moments and little pleasures, and accidentally looking at some mouse or shrew scurrying among the yellow leaves, he laughs to himself or smiles a little. Then suddenly one might see him check himself as he catches sight of the red October sun or some dark, threatening cloud. He remembers his renunciation, his supreme denial, and is again appalled. Conscience and life will not let him forget, and he sees ever before him the reverse side of the great silent door—the door which is locked, but for which there is no key....
The man searches, the man waits. He is like a ghost that may not rest, until a mistake of the old has been set right in the new. Men become his enemies. He desperately hates the circumstances of life, the things that made up his former happiness. The face in the picture hates the frame which does not suit.
Is it not all in vain! The lost opportunity never returns; the tide never rises the second time; the White Horse never comes past the gate again. “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” “With man it is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”