self-denial, of hoarded coins, of snatched
moments;--built it up little by little, at cost of bodily labour and of
bodily pain, as the pyramids were built brick by brick by the toil and
the torment of unnoticed lives.

It was only a poor little nook of land, but it had been like an empire
won to him.

With his foot on its soil he had felt rich.

And now it was gone--gone like a handful of thistle-down lost on the
winds, like a spider's web broken in a shower of rain. Gone: never to be
his own again. Never.

He sat and watched the brook run on, the pied birds come to drink, the
throstle stir on the olive, the cloud shadows steal over the brown, bare
fields.

The red flush of sunrise faded. Smoke rose from the distant roofs. Men
came out on the lands to work. Bells rang. The day began.

He got up slowly and went away; looking backwards, looking backwards,
always.

Great leaders who behold their armed hosts melt like snow, and great
monarchs who are driven out discrowned from the palaces of their
fathers, are statelier figures and have more tragic grace than he
had;--only a peasant leaving a shred of land, no bigger than a rich
man's dwelling-house will cover;--but vanquished leader or exiled
monarch never was more desolate than Bruno, when the full sun rose and
he looked his last look upon the three poor fields, where for ever the
hands of other men would labour, and for ever the feet of other men
would wander.

* * *

He only heard the toads cry to one another, feeling rain coming, "Crake!
crake! crake! We love a wet world as men an evil way. The skies are
going to weep; let us be merry. Crock! crock! crock!"

And they waddled out--slow, quaint, black things, with arms akimbo, and
stared at him with their shrewd, hard eyes. They would lie snug a
thousand years with a stone and be quite happy.

Why were not men like that?

Toads are kindly in their way, and will get friendly. Only men seem to
them such fools.

The toad is a fakeer, and thinks the beatitude of life lies in
contemplation. Men fret and fuss and fume, and are for ever in haste;
the toad eyes them with contempt.

* * *

I would die this hour, oh, so gladly, if I could be quite sure that my
music would be loved, and be remembered. I do not know: there can be
nothing like it, I think:--a thing you create, that is all your own,
that is the very breath of your mouth, and the very voice of your soul;
which