s all the more scared and violent for being so
very weak.

When in the mild warmth of spring, from the air, the depths of the
earth, from the flowers and their languages, a new revelation rises
round her on every side, she is taken dizzy at the first. Her
swelling bosom overflows. The Sibyl of science has her tortures, like
her of Cumae or of Delphi. The schoolmen find their fun in saying, "It
is the wind and nought else that blows her out. Her lover, the Prince
of the Air, fills her with dreams and delusions, with wind, with
smoke, with emptiness." Foolish irony! So far from this being the true
cause of her drunkenness, it is nothing empty, it is a real, a
substantial thing, which has loaded her bosom all too quickly.

* * * * *

Have you ever seen the agave, that hard wild African shrub, so sharp,
bitter, and tearing, with huge bristles instead of leaves? Ten years
through it loves and dies. At length one day the amorous shoot, which
has so long been gathering in the rough thing, goes off with a noise
like gunfire, and darts skyward. And this shoot becomes a whole tree,
not less than thirty feet high, and bristling with sad flowers.

Some such analogy does the gloomy Sibyl feel, when one morning of a
spring-time, late in coming, and therefore impetuous at the last,
there takes place all around her a vast explosion of life.

And all things look at her, and all things bloom for her. For every
thing that has life says softly, "Whoso understands me, I am his."

What a contrast! Here is the wife of the desert and of despair, bred
up in hate and vengeance, and lo! all these innocent things agree to
smile upon her! The trees, soothed by the south wind, pay her gentle
homage. Each herb of the field, with its own special virtue of scent,
or remedy, or poison--very often the three things are one--offers
itself to her, saying, "Gather me."

All things are clearly in love. "Are they not mocking me? I had been
readier for hell than for this strange festival. O spirit, art thou
indeed that spirit of dread whom once I knew, the traces of whose
cruelty I bear about me--what am I saying, and where are my
senses?--the wound of whose dealing scorches me still?

"Ah, no! 'Tis not the spirit whom I hoped for in my rage; '_he who
always says, No!_' This other one utters a yes of love, of drunken
dizziness. What ails him? Is he the mad, the dazed soul of life?

"They spoke of the great Pan as dead. B