Few
reasoning people, viewing the matter in the abstract, can do
otherwise than rejoice that a human being is saved from the
weariness of the tired years that make up life. For who shall
disprove the pessimist's assertion that it is better not to have
been born than to come into the world, and that it is better to
die than to live? But those from whom the single hope of their
existence is ravished find little consolation in reason. Grief
is the most intensely egotistical of emotions. I have lost all
that makes life beautiful to me. Is not that enough for the
stricken soul?
To Carlotta it meant a passage through the valley of the shadow.
To me, at first, it meant the life of Carlotta, and then a blank
in my newly ordered scheme of things. The curse of
ineffectuality still pursued me. I had allotted to myself my
humble task--the development of the new generation in the form of
Carlotta's boy, and even that small usefulness was I denied by
Fate.
A chill, a touch of croup, an agonised watching, and the tiny
thing lay dead.
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