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If she wants one and there's plenty of money left?" Then Arethusa looked still more hopefully at Miss Eliza, for sometimes Miss Asenath's gentle vote prevailed; but this time it was not so to be. Miss Eliza bit off her thread with as much decision as ever Atropos dares use in cutting hers.
We soon shall see with what startling rapidity they are able to understand each other, and adopt concerted measures, when, for instance, the great honey thief, the huge sphinx atropos, the sinister butterfly that bears a death's head on its back, penetrates into the hive, humming its own strange note, which acts as a kind of irresistible incantation; the news spreads quickly from group to group, and from the guards at the threshold to the workers on the furthest combs, the whole population quivers.
'Destiny is eternal and irresistible, replied Clotho. 'All is ordained; but man is, nevertheless, master of his own actions. 'I do not understand that, said Proserpine. 'It is not meant to be understood, said Atropos; 'but you must nevertheless believe it. 'I make it a rule only to believe what I understand, replied Proserpine.
It was not for Clotho to decree whether the thread of a life should be stout or fragile, nor for Lachesis to choose the fashion of the web; and Atropos herself must sometimes have wept to cut a life short with her shears, and let it fall unfinished. But they were like spinners for some Power that said of life, as of a garment, Thus it must be. That Power neither gods nor men could withstand.
Aspiring to begin ab integro and reform the foundations of knowledge, he ignored or made little of what had been achieved in the past. He attempted to cut the threads of continuity as with the shears of Atropos. For any such doctrine must take account of the past as well as of the future. But a theory of progress was to grow out of his philosophy, though he did not construct it.
"Before we commit ourselves to further enterprises, my darling, let us quite understand one another upon one or two practical points bearing in mind the blades of Atropos' envious scissors. My affairs are in order" Damaris shrank, piteously expostulated. "Oh! but must we, are we obliged to speak of those things? They grate on me Commissioner Sahib, they are ugly. They hurt."
Oh, how far more befitting would it have been had I never been born, or had I been carried from that luckless womb to my grave, or had I possessed a life not longer than that of the teeth sown by Cadmus, or had Atropos cut the thread of my existence at the very hour when it had begun!
Ah! the cap is there, but the embroiderer has fled; for Atropos was severing the web of life above her head while she was weaving that silken shelter for mine! How uncouthly the huge piano that occupies the corner at the left of the door looms out in the uncertain twilight! I neither play nor sing, yet I own a piano.
Three parallel passages may be appended. One will show that this was Spinoza's belief from early years and the other two that it is not peculiar to him. "I believe," said Pantagruel, "that all intellectual souls are exempt from the scissors of Atropos.
This was no other than an unhappy officer of hussars; who, after having the good fortune to take a Turkish standard, was desperately wounded in the thigh, and obliged to quit his horse; finding himself in such a helpless condition, he had wrapped his acquisition round his body, that whatever might happen, he and his glory should not be parted; and thus shrouded, among the dying and the dead, he had observed the progress of our heroine, who stalked about the field, like another Atropos, finishing, wherever she came, the work of death.
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