Nevertheless, my life is over.

What a little thing!  I knew how the philosophers had spoken; I repeated their musical phrases about the mortal span—­yet never till now believed them.  And this is all?  A man’s life can be so brief and so vain?  Idly would I persuade myself that life, in the true sense, is only now beginning; that the time of sweat and fear was not life at all, and that it now only depends upon my will to lead a worthy existence.  That may be a sort of consolation, but it does not obscure the truth that I shall never again see possibilities and promises opening before me.  I have “retired,” and for me as truly as for the retired tradesman, life is over.  I can look back upon its completed course, and what a little thing!  I am tempted to laugh; I hold myself within the limit of a smile.

And that is best, to smile, not in scorn, but in all forbearance, without too much self-compassion.  After all, that dreadful aspect of the thing never really took hold of me; I could put it by without much effort.  Life is done—­and what matter?  Whether it has been, in sum, painful or enjoyable, even now I cannot say—­a fact which in itself should prevent me from taking the loss too seriously.  What does it matter?  Destiny with the hidden face decreed that I should come into being, play my little part, and pass again into silence; is it mine either to approve or to rebel?  Let me be grateful that I have suffered no intolerable wrong, no terrible woe of flesh or spirit, such as others—­alas! alas!—­have found in their lot.  Is it not much to have accomplished so large a part of the mortal journey with so much ease?  If I find myself astonished at its brevity and small significance, why, that is my own fault; the voices of those gone before had sufficiently warned me.  Better to see the truth now, and accept it, than to fall into dread surprise on some day of weakness, and foolishly to cry against fate.  I will be glad rather than sorry, and think of the thing no more.

XXIV.

Waking at early dawn used to be one of the things I most dreaded.  The night which made me capable of resuming labour had brought no such calm as should follow upon repose; I woke to a vision of the darkest miseries and lay through the hours of daybreak—­too often—­in very anguish.  But that is past.  Sometimes, ere yet I know myself, the mind struggles as with an evil spirit on the confines of sleep; then the light at my window, the pictures on my walls, restore me to happy consciousness, happier for the miserable dream.  Now, when I lie thinking, my worst trouble is wonder at the common life of man.  I see it as a thing so incredible that it oppresses the mind like a haunting illusion.  Is it the truth that men are fretting, raving, killing each other, for matters so trivial that I, even I, so far from saint or philosopher, must needs fall into amazement