ext shrine we
pass.

* * *

Therefore, in those days men, giving themselves leave to be glad for a
little space, were glad with the same sinewy force and manful singleness
of purpose as made them in other times laborious, self-denying, patient,
and fruitful of high thoughts and deeds.

Because they laboured for their fellows, therefore they could laugh with
them; and because they served God, therefore they dared be glad.

In those grave, dauntless, austere lives the Carnival's jocund revelry
was as one golden bead in a pilgrim's rosary of thorn-berries.

They had aimed highly and highly achieved; therefore they could go forth
amidst their children and rejoice.

But we--in whom all art is the mere empty Shibboleth of a ruined
religion whose priests are all dead; we--whose whole year-long course is
one Dance of Death over the putridity of our pleasures; we--whose
solitary purpose it is to fly faster and faster from desire to satiety,
from satiety to desire, in an endless eddy of fruitless effort;
we--whose greatest genius can only raise for us some inarticulate
protest of despair against some unknown God;--we have strangled King
Carnival and killed him, and buried him in the ashes of our own
unutterable weariness and woe.

* * *

Oh, I believe it was all true enough.

There were mighty Pascarelli in the olden days. But I am very glad that
I was not of them; except, indeed, that I should have liked to strike a
blow or two for Guido Calvacanti and have hindered the merrymaking of
those precious rascals who sent him out to die of the marsh fever.

Great?

No; certainly I would not be great. To be a great man is endlessly to
crave something that you have not; to kiss the hands of monarchs and
lick the feet of peoples. To be great? Who was ever more great than
Dante, and what was his experience?--the bitterness of begged bread, and
the steepness of palace stairs.

Besides, given the genius to deserve it, the up-shot of a life spent for
greatness is absolutely uncertain. Look at Machiavelli.

After having laid down infallible rules for social and public success
with such unapproachable astuteness that his name has become a synonym
for unerring policy, Machiavelli passed his existence in obedience and
submission to Rome, to Florence, to Charles, to Cosmo, to Leo, to
Clement.

He was born into a time favourable beyond every other to sudden changes
of fortune; a time in whic