though it burned like fire; he must clutch it to his bosom, though
it tore at his heart-strings.

"Sometimes," he said, "I fail and have to give up; and then I have
nothing but a memory without words--or perhaps a few broken phrases
that seem mere nonsense. Then I am like a man who has seen some
loved one drowned or burned to death before his eyes. It is a thing
so ineffable, so precious; and some power seeks to tear it away from
me, to bear it into oblivion forever. I can't know, of course--it
might come to some one else--or it might never come again. The
feeling I have is like that of a mother for an unborn child; if I do
not give it life, no one ever will. And don't you see--compared with
that, what does anything else count? I would lie down and be crushed
to pieces, if that would help; truly, I would suffer less than I
suffer in what I try to do. And so, the things that other men care
for--they simply don't exist for me. I must have a little money,
because I have to have something to eat, and a place to work in. But
I don't want position or fame--I don't shrink from any ridicule or
humiliation. It seems like a mad thing to say, but I have nothing to
do either with men's evil or with their good. I am not bound by any
of their duties; I can't have any country or any home, I can't have
wife or children--I can hardly even have any friends. Don't you
see?"

"Yes," whispered Corydon, deeply moved, "I see."

"Look," he went on--"see all the vice and misery in the world--the
cruelty and greed and hate. And see all the stupid and petty things,
the narrow motives, the vanities and the jealousies! And all that is
because people haven't this thing that has come to me; they don't