e of the engines of fate, we can only salute her--the immortal
one--afar off. But if we have the courage, the obstinacy, the
endurance, to wait--even a short while longer--she will be near us
again; and the old magical spell, transforming the world, will thrill
through us like the breath of spring!

Why should we attempt to deceive ourselves? We cannot always
live with those liberating airs blowing upon our foreheads. We have
to bear the burden of the unillumined hours, even as our fathers
before us, and our children after us. Enough if we keep our souls so
prepared that when the touch, the glimpse, the word, the gesture,
that carries with it the thrilling revelation of the "grand manner",
returns to us in its appointed hour, it shall find us not unworthy of
our inheritance.

RABELAIS

There are certain great writers who make their critics feel even as
children, who picking up stray wreckage and broken shells from the
edge of the sea waves, return home to show their companions "what
the sea is like."

The huge suggestiveness of this tremendous spirit is not easy to
communicate in the space of a little essay.

But something can be done, if it only take the form of modest
"advice to the reader."

Is it a pity, one asks oneself, or is it a profound advantage, that
enjoyment of Rabelais should be so limited? At least there are no
false versions to demolish here--no idealizations to unmask.

The reading of Rabelais is not easy to everyone, and perhaps to
those for whom it is least easy, he would be most medicinal. What in
this mad world, do we lack, my dear friends? Is it possibly
_courage?_ Well, Rabelais is, of all writers, the one best able to give
us that courage. If only we had courage, how the great tides of
existence might sweep us along--and we not whine or wince at all!

To read Rabelais is to gather, as if from the earth-gods, spirit to
endure anything. Naturally he uses wine, and every kind of wanton
liquor, to serve as symbols of the intoxication he would produce. For
we must be "rendered drunk" to swallow Life at this rate--to
swallow it as the gods swallow it. We must be drunk but not mad.
For in the spiritual drunkenness that Rabelais produces there is not
the remotest touch of insanity. He is the sanest of all the great
writers; perhaps the only sane one. What he has the power of
communicating to us is a renewal of that _physiological energy,_
which alone makes it possible to enjoy this monstro