reign alone, but she holds in her hand the rose whose every petal is
a god; and there, O swiftly she comes! is Aphrodite under a twilight
falling from the wings of numberless sparrows, and about her feet are
the grey and white doves.' In the midst of my dream I saw him hold
out his left arm and pass his right hand over it as though he stroked
the wings of doves. I made a violent effort which seemed almost to
tear me in two, and said with forced determination: 'You would sweep
me away into an indefinite world which fills me with terror; and yet
a man is a great man just in so far as he can make his mind reflect
everything with indifferent precision like a mirror.' I seemed to be
perfectly master of myself, and went on, but more rapidly: 'I command
you to leave me at once, for your ideas and phantasies are but the
illusions that creep like maggots into civilizations when they begin
to decline, and into minds when they begin to decay.' I had grown
suddenly angry, and seizing the _alembic_ from the table, was
about to rise and strike him with it, when the peacocks on the door
behind him appeared to grow immense; and then the _alembic_ fell
from my fingers and I was drowned in a tide of green and blue and
bronze feathers, and as I struggled hopelessly I heard a distant
voice saying: 'Our master Avicenna has written that all life proceeds
out of corruption.' The glittering feathers had now covered me
completely, and I knew that I had struggled for hundreds of years,
and was conquered at last. I was sinking into the depth when the
green and blue and bronze that seemed to fill the world became a sea
of flame and swept me away, and as I was swirled along I heard a
voice over my head cry, 'The mirror is broken in two pieces,' and
another voice answer, 'The mirror is broken in four pieces,' and a
more distant voice cry with an exultant cry, 'The mirror is broken
into numberless pieces'; and then a multitude of pale hands were
reaching towards me, and strange gentle faces bending above me, and