CHAPTER VIII

Of the encounter of two strange young men and their consorting:  In which the male reader is requested to bear in mind what wild creature he was in his youth, while the female should marvel credulously.

The young man who fancied he had robed himself in the plain homespun of a natural philosopher at the age of twenty-three journeyed limping leisurely in the mountain maid Carinthia’s footsteps, thankful to the Fates for having seen her; and reproving the remainder of superstition within him, which would lay him open to smarts of evil fortune if he, encouraged a senseless gratitude for good; seeing that we are simply to take what happens to us.  The little inn of the village on the perch furnished him a night’s lodging and a laugh of satisfaction to hear of a young lady and gentleman, and their guide, who had devoured everything eatable half a day in advance of him, all save the bread and butter, and a few scraps of meat, apologetically spread for his repast by the maid of the inn:  not enough for, a bantam cock, she said, promising eggs for breakfast.  He vowed with an honest heart, that it was more than enough, and he was nourished by sympathy with the appetites of his precursors and the maid’s description of their deeds.  That name, Carinthia, went a good way to fill him.

Farther on he had plenty, but less contentment.  He was compelled to acknowledge that he had expected to meet Carinthia again at the Baths.  Her absence dealt a violent shock to the aerial structure he dwelt in; for though his ardour for the life of the solitudes was unfeigned, as was his calm overlooking of social distinctions, the self-indulgent dreamer became troubled with an alarming sentience, that for him to share the passions of the world of men was to risk the falling lower than most.  Women are a cause of dreams, but they are dreaded enemies of his kind of dream, deadly enemies of the immaterial dreamers; and should one of them be taken on board a vessel of the vapourish texture young Woodseer sailed in above the clouds lightly while he was in it alone, questions of past, future, and present, the three weights upon humanity, bear it down, and she must go, or the vessel sinks.  And cast out of it, what was he?  The asking exposed him to the steadiest wind the civilized world is known to blow.  From merely thinking upon one of the daughters of earth, he was made to feel his position in that world, though he refused to understand it, and assisted by two days of hard walking he reduced Carinthia to an abstract enthusiasm, no very serious burden.  His note-book sustained it easily.  He wrote her name in simple fondness of the name; a verse, and hints for more, and some sentences, which he thought profound.  They were composed as he sat by the roadway, on the top of hills, and in a boat crossing a dark green lake deep under wooded mountain walls:  things of priceless value.