hanged to that of a more
active misery; it seemed as if the voices of the bells reached, and
touched and pained him, in a waste of vacancy where even pain was
welcome. Outside in the night they continued to sound on, swelling and
fainting; and the listener heard in his memory, as it were their
harmonies, joy-bells clashing in a northern city, and the acclamations
of a multitude, the cries of battle, the gross voices of cannon, the
stridor of an animated life. And then all died away, and he stood face
to face with himself in the waste of vacancy, and a horror came upon his
mind, and a faintness on his brain, such as seizes men upon the brink of
cliffs.

On the table, by the side of the candle, stood a tray of glasses, a
bottle, and a silver bell. He went thither swiftly, then his hand
lowered first above the bell, then settled on the bottle. Slowly he
filled a glass, slowly drank it out; and, as a tide of animal warmth
recomforted the recesses of his nature, stood there smiling at himself.
He remembered he was young; the funeral curtains rose, and he saw his
life shine and broaden and flow out majestically, like a river sunward.
The smile still on his lips, he lit a second candle and a third; a fire
stood ready built in a chimney, he lit that also; and the fir-cones and
the gnarled olive billets were swift to break in flame and to crackle on
the hearth, and the room brightened and enlarged about him like his
hopes. To and fro, to and fro, he went, his hands lightly clasped, his
breath deeply and pleasurably taken. Victory walked with him; he marched
to crowns and empires among shouting followers; glory was his dress. And
presently again the shadows closed upon the solitary. Under the gilt of
flame and candle-light, the stone walls of the apartment showed down
bare and cold; behind the depicted triumph loomed up the actual failure:
defeat, the long distress of the flight, exile, despair, broken
followers, mourning faces, empty pockets, friends estranged. The memory
of his father rose in his mind: he, too, estranged and defied; despair
sharpened into wrath. There was one who had led armies in the field, who
had staked his life upon the family enterprise, a man of action and
experience, of the open air, the camp, the court, the council-room; and
he was to accept direction from an old, pompous gentleman in a home in
Italy, and buzzed about by priests? A pretty king, if he had not a
martial son to lean upon! A king at all?