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It is really remarkable that at the present day, in spite of ages of education and social enlightenment, in spite of centuries of Christian teaching and practice, we have now amongst us many customs which owe their origin to pagan beliefs and the superstitions of our heathen forefathers, and have no other raison d'être for their existence than the wild legends of Scandinavian mythology.
It is just because Titian's art of this great period of some twenty years so entirely accords with what we know, and may legitimately infer, to have been his life at this time, that it becomes important to consider the friendship with Aretino and the rise of the so-called Triumvirate, which was a kind of Council of Three, having as its raison d'être the mutual furtherance of material interests, and the pursuit of art, love, and pleasure.
Stations happened now and then, little silent spots in the wilderness, their raison d'être a mystery, no houses, roads, or living things near, except a white tent or two, and some sunburnt men in khaki looking curiously at us. There are troops in small bodies all up the line in this 'loyal' colony.
And at 6.15 the party of orderlies will be back again at the front door, again the motor-cars will stream up the drive, again the ambulances will come with their stretchers, and again the receiving hall will awaken from its interlude of silence to echo with the activities incidental to a clearing house of those damaged human bundles which are the raison d'être of our great war-hospital.
The exercise of the duties which property imposes and the responsibility which it entails being the chief advantages of a landed gentry, and their main raison d'être as a ruling caste having been conspicuous by its absence, with few exceptions, in Ireland, the passing of the landowner as a social factor is looked upon with complacency.
It is pure sophistry to argue, as do Canon Row and other defenders of miracles, that 'the laws of Nature are no more violated by the performance of a miracle than they are by the activities of a man. If these arguments of the special pleaders had any force at all, it would simply amount to this: 'The activities of man' being a part of nature, we have no evidence of a supernatural being, which is the sole RAISON D'ETRE of miracle.
"Yes," replied D'Argens, "and at the same time he wrote here to Formay: 'Votre roi est toujours un homme unique, etonnant, inimitable; il fait des vers charmants dans de temps ou un autre ne pourrait faire un ligne de prose, il merite d'etre heureux." The king laughed aloud. "Well, and what does that prove, that Voltaire is the greatest and most unprejudiced of poets?"
Closely as Anthony trod on the heels of his income, he considered it to be enough. Some golden day, of course, he would have many millions; meanwhile he possessed a raison d'etre in the theoretical creation of essays on the popes of the Renaissance. This flashes back to the conversation with his grandfather immediately upon his return from Rome.
But you did not forget the raison d'etre of it all, you did not forget that when the "prince" arrived there was the spirit of true celebration about it, the celebration not only of an arrived artist, but of an idea close to the hearts and minds of those present, and you had a sense, too, of what it must have been like in that circle of, no doubt, a higher average of adherents, in the drawing room of the genius Mallarmé, who, from all accounts, was as perfected in the art of conversation, as he was in expression in art.
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