Bernard Capes

“ A wild, dim theory, peopling woods, and fields, and cities with a mystic company—phantoms, yet capable of revealing themselves in fitful glimpses to the sinless and the sympathetic among men—ghosts, weaving impalpable webs of love across populous ways to catch men's souls in their meshes. Montano called it all transcendental fustian. ”

“ For, so Bernardo insisted, there was an immutable law in Nature that no soul reincarnated could re-enter the sphere from which it was last returned, but must seek new fields of action. Wherefore all earth-loving spirits, which we call apparitions, were such as after death clung about the ways of men, in a yearning hopefulness to redeem them by touching their hearts with sympathy and their eyes with a mist of sorrow. ”

“ No future, say'st? But how about that heir of the compound interest? Is there not one waiting to succeed to him? Where? Why, in the future, as surely and inevitably as this date, which I am going to swallow in a moment, will be blood and tissue in me to-morrow.'
He held the fruit up—with a swift movement Bernardo whipped it out of his hand and ate it himself.
'How for your future now?' he chuckled, pinking all over.
Cicada laughed loudly, and Montano swore. ”

“ He addressed himself, with infinite irony, to Montano.
'Good master philosopher,' said he, 'there is one fable for you: listen while I relate another. A certain rogue was stripped and beaten by a greater, who going on his way, there came a stranger, a mere child, and marked the fellow groaning. "Poor soul!" ”

“ His philosophy was not proof against such practical jokes. But, seeing his fury, the boy put out all his sweetness to propitiate him. He was his father's friend; he was a man of learning; he had suffered grievous wrong. The dog was coaxed presently into opening again upon the angelic principles. It was by such virulent irony that he thought—so warped was his mental vision—to corrode the candour of this saint, and bend him to his own views and uses—a diseased vanity, even had he not reckoned, as will now appear, without the consideration of another possible factor. ”

“ Belike Nero was welcomed of his kind, as Galeazzo would be. I can scarce see in the Duke the raw material of your fashion of angel. There's more of the harpy about him than the harp.'
It was a heavenly day. Bernardo, still a little hectic and languid from his fever, sat in the embrasure of a window which gave upon the back court of the smithy. A muffled tinkling of armourers' hammers reached his ears pleasantly from the rear of neighbouring premises. ”

“ We represent, each in himself, a fraction of the principal, having a direct pedigree ab initio. As a spider will gather the hundred strands of his web into a little ball which he will swallow, so might we each absorb and claim the whole vast web of life. Rolled up to include each radiating thread, the web becomes I; the spider is I; I am the principal of life—not the principle: that is Prometheus' secret."'
'"I am a fraction of life's compound interest. ”

“ Imagination founders in those fathomless depths. Tenuous, dim-forgotten ghosts rise from them. Who shall say that my dreams, however seeming mad and grotesque, are not faithful reflexes of states and conditions which were once realities ”

“ The future is not.'
'Pooh! a mere Jesuitry, justifying the moment's abomination.'
'Nay: for we shall have to retraverse our deeds, and carry back their burden to our first account—with most, a toilful journey.'
'They would do better to stop with your Christ, then; and, judged by the preponderance of evil spirits here, I think most do. ”