like one of Hoffmann's revenants before an "oval mirror," like the last trace of a glowing, dazzling electric light fit for the Götterdämmerung, or like the memory of a thousand meteors that have sped hissing through the sky, mocking the rockets of men and the rays of the sun, and fallen, dust and ashes, into the silent dark of nothingness.
But who among us cannot recall some August day, some hour of intense heat and of manly joy, when the words of Nietzsche lashed our hearts to the gallop, pulsed in our veins, and brought us an Alpine wind of strength and liberty? Can you forget, O friend lost to me now though still alive, that lonely summit of Pratomagno whence our voices, musical with emotion, shouted the red and shameless phrases of the Zarathustra into the cool air of the Casentino? Later on came that criticism which trails greatness and seeks to belittle it; later still the senile calm of the years of reflection. As we grew serious we grew weak and faint in spirit. Philosophy opened its mouth, set all things in place, began and closed its paragraph; and life, that had overflowed and sped toward shores unnamed in atlases, shrank within the brick beds of straight canals, and mirrored without restlessness the white clouds of heaven and the grasses of the narrow banks.
Perhaps the time has come for setting sail again. Whither?
The turmoil of passions has been stilled, ship-
