FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   >>  
him by a runner still swift of foot: for a moment he experienced a singular curiosity, almost an ardent desire to enter upon a future, the possibilities of which seemed so large. And just then, again amid the memory of certain touching actual words and images, came the thought of the great hope, that hope against hope, which, as he conceived, had arisen--Lux sedentibus in tenebris+--upon the aged world; the hope Cornelius had seemed to bear away upon him in his strength, with a buoyancy which had caused Marius to feel, not so much that by a caprice of destiny, he had been left to die in his place, as that Cornelius was gone on a mission to deliver him also from death. There had been a permanent protest established in the world, a plea, a perpetual after-thought, which humanity henceforth would ever possess in reserve, against any wholly mechanical and disheartening theory of itself and its conditions. That was a thought which relieved for him the iron outline of the horizon about him, touching it as if with soft light from beyond; filling the shadowy, hollow places to which he was on his way with the warmth of definite affections; confirming also certain considerations by which he seemed to link himself to the generations to come in the world he was leaving. Yes! through the survival of their children, happy parents are able to [222] think calmly, and with a very practical affection, of a world in which they are to have no direct share; planting with a cheerful good-humour, the acorns they carry about with them, that their grand-children may be shaded from the sun by the broad oak-trees of the future. That is nature's way of easing death to us. It was thus too, surprised, delighted, that Marius, under the power of that new hope among men, could think of the generations to come after him. Without it, dim in truth as it was, he could hardly have dared to ponder the world which limited all he really knew, as it would be when he should have departed from it. A strange lonesomeness, like physical darkness, seemed to settle upon the thought of it; as if its business hereafter must be, as far as he was concerned, carried on in some inhabited, but distant and alien, star. Contrariwise, with the sense of that hope warm about him, he seemed to anticipate some kindly care for himself; never to fail even on earth, a care for his very body-that dear sister and companion of his soul, outworn, suffering, and in the very article of
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   >>  



Top keywords:
thought
 

Cornelius

 

touching

 

children

 

Marius

 
generations
 
future
 

nature

 
surprised
 

delighted


easing

 

planting

 
cheerful
 

direct

 
calmly
 

practical

 
affection
 
humour
 

acorns

 

shaded


Contrariwise

 

anticipate

 

distant

 

concerned

 

carried

 

inhabited

 

kindly

 

companion

 

outworn

 

suffering


article

 
sister
 

ponder

 

limited

 

Without

 
darkness
 

settle

 
business
 

physical

 
departed

strange
 

lonesomeness

 
sedentibus
 
tenebris
 

arisen

 

images

 
conceived
 

strength

 
caprice
 

destiny