Look again at the Dutch clock. Two hours have gone. John Burley has broken out again from his silence, his voice thick and husky, and his laugh cracked; and he talks, O ye gods! such rubbish and ribaldry; and the listeners roar aloud, and think it finer than before. And Leonard, who had hitherto been measuring himself, in his mind, against the giant, and saying inly, "He soars out of my reach," finds the giant shrink smaller and smaller, and saith to himself, "He is but of man's common standard after all."
Look again at the Dutch clock. Three hour have passed. Is John Burley now of man's common standard? Man himself seems to have vanished from the scene; his soul stolen from him, his form gone away with the fumes of the smoke, and the nauseous steam from that fiery bowl. And Leonard looked round, and saw but the swine of Circe--some on the floor, some staggering against the walls, some hugging each other on the tables, some fighting, some bawling, some weeping. The divine spark had fled from the human face; the beast is everywhere growing more and more out of the thing that had been man. And John Burley, still unconquered, but clean lost to his senses, fancies himself a preacher, and drawls forth the most lugubrious sermon upon the brevity of life that mortal ever heard, accompanied with unctuous sobs; and now and then, in the midst of balderdash, gleams out a gorgeous sentence, that Jeremy Taylor might have envied; drivelling away again into a cadence below the rhetoric of a Muggletonian. And the waiters choked up the doorway, listening and laughing, and prepared to call cabs and coaches; and suddenly some one turned off the gas light, and all was dark as pitch--howls and laughter as of the damned, ringing through the Pandemonium. Out from the black atmosphere stept the boy-poet; and the still stars rushed on his sight, as they looked over the grimy roof-tops.
Well, Leonard, this is the first time thou hast shown that thou hast in thee the iron out of which true manhood is forged and shaped. Thou hast _the power to resist_. Forth, unebriate, unpolluted, he came from the orgy, as yon star above him came from the cloud.
He had a latch key to his lodging. He let himself in, and walked noiselessly up the creaking wooden stair. It was dawn. He passed on to his window, and threw it open. The green elm-tree from the carpenter's yard looked as fresh and fair as if rooted in solitudes, leagues away from the smoke of Babylon.
