piece
overboard (as would have been done in a moment in the case of the _dii
minores_), notwithstanding that it was one which was full of
improbabilities, and bristling with difficulties (much more real
difficulties from the stage-manager's point of view, than many
Shakesperian plays, in which those difficulties are more apparent than
real). What had to be done was to express great admiration of it; to
laud it up to the skies, and then to declare, with deep regret, that
the capabilities of the stage were not practically sufficient for the
production of a thing so great. It was this which had to be done; and
the letter in which Iffland stated all this to the author (the
construction of which was on the lines of the well-known form of
refusal of the Italians, '_ben parlato-ma_'), was, of course, a
classical master-piece of theatrical diplomacy. It was not from the
nature of the piece itself that the manager deduced the impossibility
of representing it on the stage; he merely, in a courteous manner,
complained of the stage-manager, the property-men, and the carpenters,
to whose magic there were such narrow limits that they were not even
capable of making a Saint's glory shine in the air. But, no more on the
subject. It is for Theodore to make such excuses as he can for the
errors of his friend."

"To defend and excuse this friend of mine," said Theodore, "I fear
would be a very unsatisfactory thing to try to do. I should much prefer
to set you a psychical problem to solve, which ought, really, to lead
you to consider how peculiar influences may work upon the psychical
organism; or, indeed (to return to Cyprian's simile, the worm
engendered along with the most beautiful flower), on the worm which is
to poison and kill. We are told Hysterism in the mother is not
transmitted, by heredity, to the son, but that it does produce in him a
peculiarly lively imagination, even to the extent of eccentricity; and
I believe that there is one of ourselves in whose case the correctness
of this theory is confirmed. Now, how might it be with the effect of
actual _insanity_ of the mother upon the son, although he does not, as
a rule, inherit that either? I am not speaking of that weak, childish
sort of mental aberration in women, which is often the result of an
enfeebled nervous system; what I have in view is that abnormal mental
state in which the psychic principle, volatilized into a sublimate by
the operation of the furnace of imaginati