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This was not the least affliction he had suffered from the unwearied endeavours and unexhausted invention of his tormentors, who harassed him with such a variety of mischievous pranks, that he began to think all the devils in hell had conspired against his peace; and accordingly became very serious and contemplative on the subject.
Afterwards, when they have suffered many temptations, and when the foul annoyances of thoughts that are idle, and of vanities which will encumber those who cannot destroy them, are passing away, He makes them gather up their heart to them and fasten it only in Him, and opens to the eye of their souls the gates of heaven: and then the fire of love verily lies in their heart, and burns therein, and makes it clean from all earthly filth, and afterwards they are contemplative men, and ravished in love.
It came and went, to and fro, slowly along the line of Indifference, without ever transgressing as its extreme limits on either hand, Moderate Desires and Slight Troubles. I led obscurely a contemplative life, and I was generally considered a queer character. I fulfilled my duties, and took little heed of any one.
There are perils in the height that are not perils on the earth. Now Master Richard described the state into which he fell under a curious name that I cannot altogether understand. He said that there be three nights through which the contemplative soul must pass or ever it come to the dawn. This second is not often attained to by ordinary souls, though all men who serve God have a shadow of it.
The spiritual life in which this value lies is practical in its associations, because it understands and dominates what touches action; yet it is contemplative in essence, since successful action consists in knowing what you are attempting and in attempting what you can find yourself achieving.
That laugh on surveying the departing pomps of Charlemagne, must, in any contemplative ear, have rung with a sound of deep significance, and with something of the same effect which belongs to a figure of death introduced by a painter, as mixing in the festal dances of a bridal assembly.
Contemplative, receptive, with a keen sense of certain sub-tones and side aspects of life unseen by most, he doubtless chose wisely to enjoy life his own way, and to gather from the fleeting days what bliss they had to give, nor spend them in toiling for a harvest to be reaped when he was dust.
"I have felt deep regret, sir, for that accident the other day I set down the penholder clumsily, in equilibrium unstable equilibrium besides, I had no notion there was a reader behind the desk. Of course, if I had been aware, I should I should have acted differently." M. Charnot allowed me to flounder on with the contemplative satisfaction of an angler who has got a fish at the end of his line.
We must at one time quite have haunted the Pantheon, where we doubtless could better than elsewhere sink to contemplative, to ruminative rest: Haydon's huge canvases covered the walls I wonder what has become now of The Banishment of Aristides, attended to the city gate by his wife and babe, every attitude and figure in which, especially that of the foreshortened boy picking up stones to shy at the all-too-just, stares out at me still.
Man is very much what his liver makes him. The streets are cooler, at least, than stuffy gas-lit rooms; and if the public would only roam them in a contemplative spirit, with eyes turned up to the peaceful constellations, the public might fall down an area now and then, but would not much disturb the neighbourhood.
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