"Nay, live! enjoy! Solomon counsels joy! Follow the guiding of thy heart and the desire of thine eyes!"
ANTHONY. "What joy is there for me? My heart is weary; my eyes are dim!"
"Seek the suburb of Racotis; push open a door that is painted blue;--and when thou shalt be in the atrium where a fountain jet murmurs unceasingly, a woman will present herself before thee--in peplos of white silk striped with gold; her hair is unloosed, her laugh like the clatter of crotali. She is skilful. In her caress thou wilt taste the pride of initiation and the appeasement of desire.
"Hast ever pressed to thy bosom a virgin who loved thee? Dost remember the surrenders of her modesty,--the passing away of her remorse in a sweet flow of tears?
"Thou canst even now imagine thyself walking with her--canst thou not?--in the wood by the light of the moon? At each pressure of your joined hands, a sweet shuddering passes through you both,--looking closely into each other your eyes seem to outpour into one another something like immaterial fluid;--and thy heart fills: it bursts: it is a suave whirl of eddying passion, an overflowing of intoxication...."
THE OLD WOMAN. "One need not possess joys in order to taste their bitterness! Even to view them from afar off begets loathing of them. Thou must be fatigued by the monotony of the same actions, the length of the days, the hideousness of the world, the stupidity of the sun?"
ANTHONY. "Aye, indeed!--I loathe all that he shines upon."
THE YOUNG WOMAN. "Hermit! hermit! thou wilt find diamonds among the flints, fountains beneath the sand, a delectation in all the hazards thou dost despise; and there are even upon earth places of such beauty that the sight of them would make thee desire to press the whole world against thy heart with love!"
THE OLD WOMAN. "Each evening that thou liest down upon the earth to slumber, thou dost hope that it may soon lie upon thee and cover thee."
THE YOUNG WOMAN. "Yet thou dost believe in the resurrection of the flesh--which is but the translation of life into eternity!"
(_Even as she speaks, the Old Woman becomes still more fleshless; and above her skull, from which the white hair has disappeared, a bat circles in the air._