low (and perhaps willingly acquiesced in the rest they
were sharing with him), he was really in an anguish of inquiry for
something on which to employ his powers; he was in a state of
excruciating activity of which the incessant agitation of the atoms in
the physical world is but a faint image; his repose was the mask of
violent vibrations, of volcanic emotions, which required months to clear
themselves in the realization of some ideal altogether disproportioned
to the expenditure of energy which had been tacitly taking place. At
these periods it seemed to him that his lot had been cast in a world
where he was himself about the only interesting fact, and from which
every attractive subject had been removed before he came into it.

He could never tell just how or when all this changed, and a little ray,
very faint and thin at first, stole in upon his darkness and broadened
to an effulgence which showed his narrow circle a boundless universe
thronged with the most available passions, interests, motives,
situations, catastrophes and denouements, and characters eagerly fitting
themselves with the most appropriate circumstances. As nearly as he
could make out, his liberation to this delightful cosmos took place
through his gradual perception that human nature was of a vast equality
in the important things, and had its difference only in trifles. He had
but to take other men in the same liberal spirit that he took himself to
find them all heroes; he had but to take women at their own estimate to
find them all heroines, if not divinely beautiful, then interesting,
fascinating, irresistibly better than beautiful. The situation was
something like this; it will not do to give away his whole secret; but
the reader needs only a hint in order to understand how in his new mind
Eugenio was overwhelmed with subjects.

After this illumination of his the only anxiety he had was concerning
his ability to produce all the masterpieces he felt himself capable of
in the short time allotted to the longest-lived writer. He was aware of
a duty to the material he had discovered, and this indeed sometimes
weighed upon him. However, he took courage from the hope that others
would seize his point of view and be able to carry on the work of
producing masterpieces indefinitely. They could never use up all the
subjects, any more than men can exhaust the elements of the aluminium
which abound in every piece of the common earth; but, in their constant
r