hound, and withdrew with
reverence.

Yes; do not laugh. I felt reverential before that tiny, heroic bird,
before its loving impulse.

Love, I thought, is stronger than death.--Only by it, only by love, does
life support itself and move.

April, 1878.

THE SKULLS

A sumptuous, luxuriously illuminated ball-room; a multitude of
cavaliers and ladies.

All faces are animated, all speeches are brisk.... A rattling
conversation is in progress about a well-known songstress. The people
are lauding her as divine, immortal.... Oh, how finely she had executed
her last trill that evening!

And suddenly--as though at the wave of a magic wand--from all the heads,
from all the faces, a thin shell of skin flew off, and instantly there
was revealed the whiteness of skulls, the naked gums and cheek-bones
dimpled like bluish lead.

With horror did I watch those gums and cheek-bones moving and
stirring,--those knobby, bony spheres turning this way and that, as they
gleamed in the light of the lamps and candles, and smaller spheres--the
spheres of the eyes bereft of sense--rolling in them.

I dared not touch my own face, I dared not look at myself in a mirror.
But the skulls continued to turn this way and that, as before.... And
with the same clatter as before, the brisk tongues, flashing like red
rags from behind the grinning teeth, murmured on, how wonderfully, how
incomparably the immortal ... yes, the immortal songstress had executed
her last trill!

April, 1878.

THE TOILER AND THE LAZY MAN

A CONVERSATION

THE TOILER

Why dost thou bother us? What dost thou want? Thou art not one of us....
Go away!

THE LAZY MAN[71]

I am one of you, brethren!

THE TOILER

Nothing of the sort; thou art not one of us! What an invention! Just
look at my hands. Dost thou see how dirty they are? And they stink of
dung, and tar,--while thy hands are white. And of what do they smell?

THE LAZY MAN--_offering his hands_

Smell.

THE TOILER--_smelling the hands_

What's this? They seem to give off an odour of iron.

THE LAZY MAN

Iron it is. For the last six years I have worn fetters on them.

THE TOILER

And what was that for?

THE LAZY MAN

Because I was striving for your welfare, I wanted to liberate you, the
coarse, uneducated people; I rebelled against your oppressors, I
mutinied.... Well, and so they put me in prison.

THE TOILER

They put you in prison? It served you right for rebelling!