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He himself sits in a little tottering boat, and down below in those dark oozy depths, like prodigious fishes, he can just make out the shapes of hideous monsters: all the ills of life, diseases, sorrows, madness, poverty, blindness.... He gazes, and behold, one of these monsters separates itself off from the darkness, rises higher and higher, stands out more and more distinct, more and more loathsomely distinct.... An instant yet, and the boat that bears him will be overturned!
One gazes in wonder at the vast brass-bound chests swooping down and caught so deftly by the nimble mariners; the great black-domed ladies' dress-baskets and boxes; American and French trunks, each with its national mark on it. Every instant the pile is growing. It seems like building a mansion with vast blocks of stone piled up on each other.
It was evident from their straining upward gazes, that deeply as they were moved to reverence by my own exalted spectacle, there was some greater revelation which they awaited above. This disquieted me since I had in reserve no added climax to offer. I had given them a display savoring of the circus but I had no grand spectacle to advertise in the main tent after the regular performance.
There also stood a large arm-chair and a large table, compasses, alembics, skeletons of animals suspended from the ceiling, a globe rolling on the floor, hippocephali mingled promiscuously with drinking cups, in which quivered leaves of gold, skulls placed upon vellum checkered with figures and characters, huge manuscripts piled up wide open, without mercy on the cracking corners of the parchment; in short, all the rubbish of science, and everywhere on this confusion dust and spiders' webs; but there was no circle of luminous letters, no doctor in an ecstasy contemplating the flaming vision, as the eagle gazes upon the sun.
The American on the contrary remains cheerfully, light-heartedly, garrulously critical. He comes out in the world and gazes on it young-eyed, and he prattles: "My father is bigger than your father, and my sister has longer hair than yours, and my money box is larger than yours." It is neither unkindly meant nor, by Englishmen, very unkindly taken.
At times, with ears forward and extended nostrils, the horse gazes intently at the rippling blue waters of the mirage, that most tantalizingly deceptive phenomenon of nature. May it never be the lot of my reader to be misled by the illusive mirage as I have been. How could I mistake vapor for clear, gurgling water? Yet, how many times was I here deceived!
With quickening pulse and grand emotion He gazes down upon the globe, Whose habitations he has left forever! Cities with their palaces and towers, Surging seas, leafy forests, and fields of grain, The towering mountain and the massy Icebergs of the Polar sea sweep past His sight like fading visions.
A furtive woman comes up the hatchway and gazes with shaded eyes at passing steamers; but the men are out in the clumsy black dories that rock like a cradle to the swell of the sea, drawing in drawing in the line; or singing their sailor chanties "Come all ye Newfoundlanders" as meal of pork and cod simmers in a pot above a chip fire cooking on stones in the bottom of the boat.
Some all black, giddily dash up against us, so light and airy that they seem merely a pair of quivering wings fastened together without any body. Yves astonished, gazes at them, saying in his boyish manner: "Oh, I saw such a big one just now, such a big one, it quite frightened me; I thought it was a bat attacking me."
The flower may fade, the tree may shed its leaf, the work of art may perish, the great poem may be forgotten; the lovely ancient building, with all the grace of tradition and memory, all the sweet mellowing of outline and detail, may be dismantled or restored; yet the beauty is not in the passing form, but in the spirit that expresses itself in the form on the one hand the great, subtle, tender, powerful spirit that is for ever working and creating and producing and, on the other hand, it lies no less in the desire and worship that thrills and beats, deep in the spirit, leaning out like one who gazes upon the sunset from the window of a tower, listening to the appeal of beauty, looking out for it, welcoming it, thirsting for it.
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