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When he essayed to drink the water it always went from him, and when he stretched out his hand to pluck the fruit, back the branches sprang out of reach. In addition an immense rock, hung over his head, threatened every moment to crush him. It is said that Tantalus, when in the flesh, had betrayed the secrets of the gods and also committed other great crimes.
Jimmy's prohibition against billiards had hit him hard. He was suffering the torments of Tantalus. The castle was full of young men of the kind to whom he most resorted, easy marks every one; and here he was, simply through Jimmy, careened like a disabled battleship. It was maddening. "Make him go. You invited him here. He doesn't expect to stop indefinitely, I suppose?
As there is nothing more stimulating to human patience, and courage, and energy, than the certain prospect of relief at the end, so there is nothing more depressing than to see that relief suddenly snatched away, and the same round of toil thrust again under one's feet! This is the fate of Tantalus and Sisyphus in one.
At the bottom of the cliff appear the nodules and bowlders that were too hard to be bitten into dust and have fallen out of the cliff, which is fifty feet high, as the sea eats it away. Some of these are sculptured into the likeness effaces and figures, solemn and grotesque. It is easy to find Pharaoh, Cleopatra, Tantalus, represented here.
And he suddenly thought of the puerility of poets who have invented the useless labor of Sisyphus, the material thirst of Tantalus, the devoured heart of Prometheus!
My torture, rather!" he said, the classic name of Ariadne suggesting the idea that the pseudonym of Tantalus might well be applied to himself. But he had long kept a rule to write as little as possible, and was guarded in making reply to any letter, especially to such a communication as this.
Tantalus, in spite of his thirst, stopped for a moment his efforts for water, Ixion's wheel stood still, the vulture ceased to tear the giant's liver, the daughters of Danaus rested from their task of drawing water in a sieve, and Sisyphus sat on his rock to listen. Then for the first time, it is said, the cheeks of the Furies were wet with tears.
His quick temperament had rebounded from the depths of unequal depression, into which it so often fell, to the heights of a happy assurance. The Tantalus cup was at his lips at last, and he would drink his full, be sure! His eyes flashed and sparkled, his foot fell light and quick as an antelope's, his brown cheek glowed never had he looked so handsome.
If Serenus had done nothing else in his life, and had not read a word in all those volumes, would he not have had enough to do in learning their titles and sizes and numbers and their authors' names? Here you have a science that turns a philosopher into a librarian. This is not feeding the soul with wisdom: it is the crushing it under a weight of riches or torturing it in the waters of Tantalus.
Is he in the position of a scientific Tantalus doomed always to thirst for a knowledge which he cannot obtain? The reverse is to be hoped; nay, it may not be impossible to indicate the source whence help will come. In commencing these remarks, mention was made of the great obligations under which the naturalist lies to the geologist and paleontologist.
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