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Updated: June 13, 2025
But always in one minute or less, the warbler would be sure to begin again, when away went good resolutions and fatigue, and she sprang up like a Jack-in-the-box, saying, of course, "You sit still; I'll just go on a little," and off we went over brake and brier. While pursuing this vocal ignis fatuus I made a charming discovery.
He called the sun an ignis fatuus; and exhorted all who would listen to his friendly voice, which were about as many as called 'God save King Richard, to shelter themselves from its delusive radiance in the obscure haunt of Old Philosophy. This word Old had great charms for him.
Like the people of Nineveh, she can hardly tell her right hand from her left; but, as a changeling, is dazzled and delighted by an ignis fatuus, a Will-o'-the-wisp, an exhalation from the vilest materials in nature, that leads her astray through Westphalian bogs and deserts, and will one day break her neck over some barren rocks, or leave her sticking in some H n pit, or quagmire.
"You have no proofs whatever in support of what you advance," he said, "while I can prove to you that this light seen over or near bogs and sometimes over cemeteries, is nothing but 'ignis fatuus. This man found drowned, and all that nonsense, is nothing but what would happen under ordinary circumstances. In a state of intoxication, he walked in the pool and was drowned. Is not that plain enough?
Herein lies the chief danger danger that the American workingman will follow this or that ignus fatuus, hoping thereby to find a shorter northwest passage to impossible spice islands, until poverty has degraded him from a self-respecting sovereign into a volcanic sans culotte; until he loses hope of bettering his condition by whereases, resolutions, trades-unions, acts of Congress, etc., and, like another blind and desperate Samson, lays his brawny hands upon the pillars of the temple and pulls it down about his ears.
With his star still in the ascendant, disturbed by no forecast of the horrid nightmare of the retreat from Moscow, 'with legions scattered by the artillery of the snows and the cavalry of the winds, tortured by no dream of Leipsic, of Elba, of Waterloo, of St. Helena, he was still the 'man of destiny, relentlessly pursuing the ignis fatuus of universal empire.
The Crown might be negligent of them, the State might be apathetic as to affairs of art, aristocratic patrons might be led astray by the ignis fatuus of love of the old masters, by the fashionable tastes for antiquities; but here was 'the million' on the side of its artist compatriots; the voice of the nation had declared itself in favour of the nation's art.
This was the ignis fatuus which was to control the policy of this stormy reign, and which was to envelop it at last in the clouds of defeat and disaster. The secret of Louis' greatness was his instinctive recognition of greatness in others. His new minister, Colbert, to whom he owed so much, was a man of the people, and a protestant.
With staring black eyes, imploringly trying to pierce the gloom, with hands and feet that sought to batter and break down the thick darkness, with incoherent cries and supplications following the moving of ignis fatuus lights ahead, she ran, and ran swiftly! ran over treacherous foundations, ran by yawning gulfs, ran past branching galleries and arches, ran wildly, ran despairingly, ran blindly, and at last ran into the arms of the "Fool of Five Forks."
When they were clear of the priory, and had gained the little meadow in which it stands, Dousterswivel could perceive the torches which had caused him so much alarm issuing in irregular procession from the ruins, and glancing their light, like that of the ignis fatuus, on the banks of the lake.
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