We all
dream indemnity. But still I thought and think that there
was here a weakness in him. Far inward he may have
known it himself, the outer self was so busy finding grounds!
After a moment he spoke again, "Little things bring little
reward. But to keep proportion and harmony, great thing
must bring great things! You do not know what it is to
cross where no man hath crossed and to find what no man
hath found!"
"Yes, it is a great thing!"
"Then," said he, "what is it, that which I ask, to the
grandeur of time!"
He spoke with a lifted face, eyes upon the mountain crests
and the blue they touched. They were nearer us than they
had been; the Pass of Elvira was at hand. Yet on I walked,
and before me still hung the far ocean west of Palos. I
said, "I know something of the guesses, the chances and
the dangers, but I have not spent there years of study--"
He kindled, having an auditor whom he chose to think
intelligent. He checked his horse, that fell to grazing the
bit of green by the way. "As though," he said, "I stood
in Cipango beneath a golden roof, I know that it can be
done! Twelve hundred leagues at the most. Look!" he
said. "You are not an ignoramus like some I have met;
nor if I read you right are you like others who not knowing
that True Religion is True Wonder up with hands and cry,
`Blasphemy, Sacrilege and Contradiction!' Earth and water
make an orb.
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