LOST CAUSES


NOBLE MARQUESS MENTIONED


--We were always loyal to lost causes, the professor said. Success for us
is the death of the intellect and of the imagination. We were never loyal
to the successful. We serve them. I teach the blatant Latin language. I
speak the tongue of a race the acme of whose mentality is the maxim: time
is money. Material domination. DOMINUS! Lord! Where is the spirituality?
Lord Jesus? Lord Salisbury? A sofa in a westend club. But the Greek!


KYRIE ELEISON!


A smile of light brightened his darkrimmed eyes, lengthened his long
lips.

--The Greek! he said again. KYRIOS! Shining word! The vowels the Semite
and the Saxon know not. KYRIE! The radiance of the intellect. I ought to
profess Greek, the language of the mind. KYRIE ELEISON! The closetmaker
and the cloacamaker will never be lords of our spirit. We are liege
subjects of the catholic chivalry of Europe that foundered at Trafalgar
and of the empire of the spirit, not an IMPERIUM, that went under with the
Athenian fleets at Aegospotami. Yes, yes. They went under. Pyrrhus, misled
by an oracle, made a last attempt to retrieve the fortunes of Greece.