At times the vision is so
lucid as to produce actual pain in such minds, they feel themselves
overwhelmed by the plenitude of life revealed to them and are terrified
by the phantom of their own creation.
Thus Andrea saw his own dire distress reflected in the aspect of the
objects surrounding him, and as his own fond desires seemed wasting
fruitlessly in this protracted expectation, so the erotic essence, so to
speak, of the room appeared to be evaporating and exhaling uselessly. In
his eyes these apartments in which he had loved and also suffered so
much had acquired something of his own sensibility--had not only been
witness of his loves, his pleasures, his sorrows, but had taken part in
it all. In his memories, every outline, every tint harmonised with some
feminine image, was a note in a chord of beauty, an element in an
ecstasy of passion. The very nature of his tastes led him to seek for a
diversity of enjoyment in his love, and seeing that he set out upon that
quest as an accomplished artist and aesthetic it was only natural that he
should derive a great part of his delight from the world of external
objects. To this fastidious actor the comedy of love was nothing without
the scenery.
From that point of view his stage was certainly quite perfect, and he
himself a most adroit actor-manager; for he almost always entered heart
and soul into his own artifice, he forgot himself so completely that he
was deceived by his own deception, fell into the trap of his own laying,
and wounded himself with his own weapons--a magician enclosed in the
spells of his own weaving.
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