What might that ground be? As to Gaston himself,--had this kindly
entertainer only been drawing the screws of a very complex piece of
machinery which had worked well enough hitherto for all practical
purposes?--Was this all that had been going on, while he lingered
there, week after week, in a kind of devout attendance on theories,
and, for his part, feeling no reverberation of actual events around
him, still less of great events in preparation? These were the
questions Gaston had in mind, as, at length, he thanked his host one
morning with real regret, and took his last look around that
meditative place, the manuscripts, the books, the emblems,--the house
of Circe on the wall.
VI. SHADOWS OF EVENTS
[116] We all feel, I suppose, the pathos of that mythic situation in
Homer, where the Greeks at the last throb of battle around the body
of Patroclus find the horror of supernatural darkness added to their
other foes; feel it through some touch of truth to our own experience
how the malignancy of the forces against us may be doubled by their
uncertainty and the resultant confusion of one's own mind--blindfold
night there too, at the moment when daylight and self-possession are
indispensable.
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