this mood!" cried Euergetes. "I love you, sister, when
you are like this! It ill becomes the eagle's brood to coo like the
dove, and you have sharp talons though you hide them never so well under
your soft feathers. It is true that I am writing a treatise on harmony,
and I am doing it with delight; still it is one of those phenomena
which, though accessible to our perception, are imperishable, for no
god even could discover it entire and unmixed in the world of realities.
Where is harmony to be found in the struggles and rapacious strife of
the life of the Cosmos? And our human existence is but the diminished
reflection of that process of birth and decease, of evolution and
annihilation, which is going on in all that is perceptible to our
senses; now gradually and invisibly, now violently and convulsively, but
never harmonyously.

"Harmony is at home only in the ideal world--harmony which is unknown
even among the gods harmony, whom I may know, and yet may never
comprehend--whom I love, and may never possess--whom I long for, and who
flies from me.

"I am as one that thirsteth, and harmony as the remote, unattainable
well--I am as one swimming in a wide sea, and she is the land which
recedes as I deem myself near to it.

"Who will tell me the name of the country where she rules as queen,
undisturbed and untroubled? And which is most in earnest in his pursuit
of the fair one: He who lies sleeping in her arms, or he who is consumed
by his passion for her?

"I am seeking what you deem that you possess.--Possess--!

"Look round you on the world and on life--look round, as I do, on this
hall of which you are so proud! It was built by a Greek; but, because
the simple melody of beautiful forms in perfect concord no longer
satisfies you, and your taste requires the eastern magnificence in which
you were born, because this flatters your vanity and reminds you, each
time you gaze upon it, that you are wealthy and powerful--you commanded
your architect to set aside simple grandeur, and to build this gaudy
monstrosity, which is no more like the banqueting-hall of a Pericles
than I or you, Cleopatra, in all our finery, are like the simply clad
gods and goddesses of Phidias. I mean not to offend you, Cleopatra, but
I must say this; I am writing now on the subject of harmony, and perhaps
I shall afterwards treat of justice, truth, virtue; although I know full
well that they are pure abstractions which occur neither in nature nor