book! Do not make an old man, respectable, a Government functionary
(communal physician of the district of San Massimo and Montemirto
Ligure), confess that he is but a lazy unprofitable dreamer, collecting
materials as a child picks hips out of a hedge, only to throw them
away, liking them merely for the little occupation of scratching his
hands and standing on tiptoe, for their pretty redness.... You remember
what Balzac says about projecting any piece of work?--"_C'est fumier
des cigarettes enchantees_...." Well, well! The data obtainable
about the ancient gods in their days of adversity are few and far
between: a quotation here and there from the Fathers; two or three
legends; Venus reappearing; the persecutions of Apollo in Styria;
Proserpina going, in Chaucer, to reign over the fairies; a few obscure
religious persecutions in the Middle Ages on the score of Paganism;
some strange rites practiced till lately in the depths of a Breton
forest near Lannion.... As to Tannhaeuser, he was a real knight, and a
sorry one, and a real Minnesinger not of the best. Your Excellency will
find some of his poems in Von der Hagen's four immense volumes, but I
recommend you to take your notions of Ritter Tannhaeuser's poetry rather
from Wagner. Certain it is that the Pagan divinities lasted much longer
than we suspect, sometimes in their own nakedness, sometimes in the
stolen garb of the Madonna or the saints. Who knows whether they do not
exist to this day? And, indeed, is it possible they should not? For the
awfulness of the deep woods, with their filtered green light, the creak
of the swaying, solitary reeds, exists, and is Pan; and the blue,
starry May night exists, the sough of the waves, the warm wind carrying
the sweetness of the lemon-blossoms, the bitterness of the myrtle on
our rocks, the distant chant of the boys cleaning out their nets, of
the girls sickling the grass under the olives, _Amor--amor--amor,_
and all this is the great goddess Venus. And opposite to me, as I
write, between the branches of the ilexes, across the blue sea,