sitting together at one of the little tables in front of the club house,
let us say, at Homburg, taking tea of an afternoon and watching
the miniature golf, you would have said that, as human affairs go,
we were an extraordinarily safe castle. We were, if you will, one of
those tall ships with the white sails upon a blue sea, one of those
things that seem the proudest and the safest of all the beautiful
and safe things that God has permitted the mind of men to frame.
Where better could one take refuge? Where better?

Permanence? Stability? I can't believe it's gone. I can't believe that
that long, tranquil life, which was just stepping a minuet, vanished
in four crashing days at the end of nine years and six weeks. Upon
my word, yes, our intimacy was like a minuet, simply because on
every possible occasion and in every possible circumstance we
knew where to go, where to sit, which table we unanimously
should choose; and we could rise and go, all four together,
without a signal from any one of us, always to the music of the Kur
orchestra, always in the temperate sunshine, or, if it rained, in
discreet shelters. No, indeed, it can't be gone. You can't kill a
minuet de la cour. You may shut up the music-book, close the
harpsichord; in the cupboard and presses the rats may destroy the
white satin favours. The mob may sack Versailles; the Trianon
may fall, but surely the minuet--the minuet itself is dancing itself
away into the furthest stars, even as our minuet of the Hessian
bathing places must be stepping itself still. Isn't there any heaven
where old beautiful dances, old beautiful intimacies prolong
themselves? Isn't there any Nirvana pervaded by the faint thrilling
of instruments that have fallen into the dust of wormwood but that
yet had frail, tremulous, and everlasting souls?