using it.

AESCULAPIUS.

No; I think not. I was satisfied in the possession of exact
knowledge, and not directly aware of the charm of application. It
is the result, no doubt, of this resignation of immortality which
has startled and alarmed us all so much----

PALLAS.

Me, Aesculapius, it has neither alarmed nor startled.

AESCULAPIUS.

I mean that while we were beyond the dread of any attack, the
pleasure of rebutting such attack was unknown to us. I have
divined, since our misfortunes, that disease itself may bring an
excitement with it not all unallied to pleasure.... You smile,
Euterpe, but I mean even for the sufferer. There is more in
disease than the mere pang and languishment. There is the sense
of alleviation, the cessation of the throb, the resuming glitter
in the eye, the restoration of cheerfulness and appetite. These,
Pallas, are qualities which are indissolubly identified with pain
and decay, and which therefore--if we rightly consider--were wholly
excluded from our experience. In Olympus we never brightened, for
we never flagged; we never waited for a pang to subside, nor felt
it throbbing less and less poignantly, nor, as if we were watching
an enemy from a distance, hugged ourselves in a breathless ecstasy
as it faded altogether; this exquisite experience was unknown to
us, for we never endured the pang.

EUTERPE.

You make me eager for an illness. What shall it be? Prescribe one
for me. I am ignorant even of the names of the principal maladies.
Let it be a not unbecoming one.

AESCULAPIUS.

Ah! no, Euterpe. Your mind still runs in the channel of your lost
impermeability. Till now, you might fling yourself from the crags
of Tartarus, or float, like a trail of water-plants, on the long,
blown flood of the altar-flame, and yet take no hurt, being
imperishable. But now, part of your hourly occupation, part of your
faith, your hope, your duty, must be to preserve your body against
the inroads of decay.

EUTERPE.

You present us with a tedious conception of our new existence,
surely.

AESCULAPIUS.

Why should it be tedious? There was tedium, rather, in the
possession of bodies as durable as metal, as renewable as wax,
as insensitive as water. In the fiercest onset of the passions,
prolonged to satiety, there was always an element of the unreal.
What is pleasure, if the strain of it is followed by no fatigue;
what the delicacy of taste, if we can eat like caverns and drink
like condu