ttle room in which books and
papers mingled oddly with the bedroom furniture and the tools and
bench of his craft. There were two windows with shabby red curtains.
On nails hung a few odd garments, one of which, the doublet anciently
pierced by the fanatic's dagger, merely served as a memento, though
not visibly older than the rest of his wardrobe. "Who puts a mediocre
article into a costly envelope?" was the philosopher's sartorial
standpoint. Over the mantel (on which among some old pipes lay two
silver buckles, his only jewellery) was pinned a charcoal sketch of
Masaniello in shirt-sleeves, with a net on his shoulder, done by
Spinoza himself, and obviously with his own features as model: perhaps
in some whimsical moment when he figured himself as an intellectual
revolutionary. A portfolio that leaned against a microscope contained
black and white studies of some of his illustrious visitors, which
caught happily their essential features without detail. The few other
wall-pictures were engravings by other hands. Spinoza sat down on his
truckle-bed with a great sigh of content.

"_Desideratoque acquiescimus lecto_," he murmured. Then his eye roving
around: "My spiders' webs are gone!" he groaned.

"I could not disarrange aught in sweeping _them_ away!" deprecated the
goodwife.

"Thou hast disarranged _me_! I have learnt all my wisdom from watching
spiders!" he said, smiling.

"Nay, thou jestest."

"In no wise. The spider and the fly--the whole of life is there. 'Tis
through leaving them out that the theologies are so empty. Besides,
who will now catch the flies for my microscope?"

"I will not believe thou wouldst have the poor little flies caught by
the great big spiders. Never did I understand what Pastor Cordes
prated of turning the other cheek till I met thee."

"Nay, 'tis not my doctrine. Mine is the worship of joy. I hold that
the effort to preserve our being is virtue."

"But thou goest to church sometimes?"

"To hear a preacher."

"A strange motive." She added musingly: "Christianity is not then
true?"

"Not true for me."

"Then if thou canst not believe in it, I will not."

Spinoza smiled tenderly. "Be guided by Dr. Cordes, not by me."

The goodwife was puzzled. "Dost thou then think I can be saved in Dr.
Cordes' doctrine?" she asked anxiously.

"Yes, 'tis a very good doctrine, the Lutheran; doubt not thou wilt be
saved in it, provided thou livest at peace with thy neighbors."

Her face br