furnished than my galleries. The true millions lie here," he said,
striking his forehead. "I spend delicious days in communings with the
past; I summon before me whole countries, places, extents of sea, the
fair faces of history. In my imaginary seraglio I have all the women
that I have never possessed. Your wars and revolutions come up before
me for judgment. What is a feverish fugitive admiration for some more
or less brightly colored piece of flesh and blood; some more or less
rounded human form; what are all the disasters that wait on your
erratic whims, compared with the magnificent power of conjuring up the
whole world within your soul, compared with the immeasurable joys of
movement, unstrangled by the cords of time, unclogged by the fetters
of space; the joys of beholding all things, of comprehending all
things, of leaning over the parapet of the world to question the other
spheres, to hearken to the voice of God? There," he burst out,
vehemently, "there are To Will and To have your Will, both together,"
he pointed to the bit of shagreen; "there are your social ideas, your
immoderate desires, your excesses, your pleasures that end in death,
your sorrows that quicken the pace of life, for pain is perhaps but a
violent pleasure. Who could determine the point where pleasure becomes
pain, where pain is still a pleasure? Is not the utmost brightness of
the ideal world soothing to us, while the lightest shadows of the
physical world annoy? Is not knowledge the secret of wisdom? And what
is folly but a riotous expenditure of Will or Power?"

"Very good then, a life of riotous excess for me!" said the stranger,
pouncing upon the piece of shagreen.

"Young man, beware!" cried the other with incredible vehemence.

"I had resolved my existence into thought and study," the stranger