No, by God, it is false! It wasn't a minuet that we stepped; it was a
prison--a prison full of screaming hysterics, tied down so that they
might not outsound the rolling of our carriage wheels as we went
along the shaded avenues of the Taunus Wald.

And yet I swear by the sacred name of my creator that it was true.
It was true sunshine; the true music; the true splash of the
fountains from the mouth of stone dolphins. For, if for me we
were four people with the same tastes, with the same desires,
acting--or, no, not acting--sitting here and there unanimously, isn't
that the truth? If for nine years I have possessed a goodly apple
that is rotten at the core and discover its rottenness only in nine
years and six months less four days, isn't it true to say that for nine
years I possessed a goodly apple? So it may well be with Edward
Ashburnham, with Leonora his wife and with poor dear Florence.
And, if you come to think of it, isn't it a little odd that the physical
rottenness of at least two pillars of our four-square house never
presented itself to my mind as a menace to its security? It doesn't
so present itself now though the two of them are actually dead. I
don't know. . . .

I know nothing--nothing in the world--of the hearts of men. I only
know that I am alone--horribly alone. No hearthstone will ever
again witness, for me, friendly intercourse. No smoking-room will
ever be other than peopled with incalculable simulacra amidst
smoke wreaths. Yet, in the name of God, what should I know if I
don't know the life of the hearth and of the smoking-room, since
my whole life has been passed in those places? The warm
hearthside! --Well, there was Florence: I believe that for the twelve
years her life lasted, after the storm that seemed irretrievably to