has often refused itself to a life of study. It has been born of
loitering idleness. The force which inspires him proves his mission to
be authentic. His own will could not create such promptings. He dares
not set them aside."

The depth of his conviction carries the day, and the scene ends with
these expressive words:--

"_Par._ ...
Are there not, Festus, are there not, dear Michal.
Two points in the adventure of the diver,
One--when, a beggar, he prepares to plunge,
One--when, a prince, he rises with his pearl?
Festus, I plunge!
_Fest._ We wait you when you rise!"
(vol. ii. p. 38.)

The next two, or indeed three scenes are united under the title
"Paracelsus attains;" but the attainment is not at first visible. We
find him at Constantinople, in the house of the Greek conjuror, nine
years after his departure from home. He has not discovered the magical
secret which he came to seek; and his tone, as he reviews his position,
is full of a bitter and almost despairing sense of failure. His
desultory course has borne scanty and confused results. His powers have
been at once overstrained and frittered away. He is beset by the dread
of madness; and by the fear, scarcely less intolerable, of a moral
shipwreck in which even the purity of his motives will disappear. His
thoughts revert sadly to his youth, and its lost possibilities of love
and joy. At this juncture the poet Aprile appears, and unconsciously
reveals to him the secret of his unsuccess. He has sought knowledge at