But hitherto everything has
been banded to make his sleep secure--his religion, his cupidity, his
timidity, his affections. Religion tells him it is wrong to love without
the Church; patriotism, that it is glorious to bleed in making other men
bleed; timidity, that property keeps the wolf from the door; appetite,
that under cover of the law you may devour your neighbour and fear no
indigestion. Finally, there are the affections of a man which have been so
guided that they see the aged more venerable than the young, the old thing
more sacred than the new 'Woodman, spare that tree,' they cry: 'it dates
from at least 2000 B.C.' Because old wine is good, they argue, old laws
must needs be. As well might a man say, Because I relish old wine, I will
love only old women. And so we go on!" He shrugged and broke off--to talk
shrewdly of books. They got to Leopardi, from him to Dante; he heard of
her studies at the British Museum, and hoped he might meet her there. She
reads there often? Mostly in the afternoons? The light was bad: he usually
devoted his mornings to what work he had there. He was studying Persian,
he said, but fitfully, as the mood took him.
So far he had scarcely looked at her, but had talked out his monologue as
if he had been alone, clasping one thin ankle, staring wide-eyed over the
heads of guests, occasionally, when he was vehement, throwing his head up,
shooting his words at the ceiling as if they had been Greek fire.
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