id in
Don Juan. What he desired, at the bottom of his heart, was to give
himself freely, gratefully to some higher and purer being. But where to
find that being was the question.

Truly his salvation in the future lay rather in the practice of caution,
prudence, sagacity. His tone of mind seemed to him admirably expressed
in a sonnet of a contemporary poet, whom, from a certain affinity of
literary tastes and similar aesthetic education, he particularly
affected--

'I am as one who lays himself to rest
Under the shadow of a laden tree;
Above his head hangs the ripe fruit, and he
Is weary of drawing bow or arbalest.

He shakes not the fair bough that lowliest
Droops, neither lifts he hand, nor turns to see;
But lies, and gathers to him indolently
The fruits that drop into his very breast.

In that juiced sweetness, over-exquisite,
He bites not deep; he fears the bitterness;
Yet sets it to his lips, that he may smell,

Sucks it with pleasure, not with greediness,
And he is neither grieved nor glad at it.
This is the ending of the parable.'

Art! Art! She was the only faithful mistress--forever young--immortal;
there was the Fountain of all pure joys, closed to the multitude but
freely open to the elect; that was the precious Food which makes a man
like unto a god! How could he have quaffed from other cups after having
pressed his lips to that one?--how have followed after other joys when
he had tasted that supreme one?

'But what if my intellect has become decadent?--if my hand has lost its
cunning? What if I am no longer _worthy_?' He was seized with such panic
at the thought, that he set himself wildly to find some immediate means
of proving to himself the irrational nature of his fears. He would
instantly compose some difficult verses, draw a figure, engrave a plate,
solve some problem of form. Well--and what then? Might not the result be
entirely fallacious? The slow decay of power may be imperceptible to the
possessor--that is the terrible thing about it. The artist who loses his
genius little by little is unaware of his progressive feebleness, for as
he loses his power of production he also loses his critical faculty, his
judgment. He no longer perceives the defects of his work--does not know
that it is mediocre or bad. That is the horror of it! The artist who has
fallen from his original high estate is no more conscious of his
failings than the lun