A
conscientious fellow, as he was, Clarian had hitherto been very faithful to
his duties in the regular curriculum,--but now all this was changed. Here
was a grand something to be done, a something so grand, indeed, that his
whole life must bow before its exactions, and all minor duties step out of
the way of Juggernaut. Who thinks of etiquette, of drawing-room
trivialities, when here we are before this mistress, at whose feet we must
pour out our soul? for her love blesses us with new life, her scorn damns
us with eternal despair. In this cursed fashion always the Idea masters a
man's soul, when he has once listened to its Lurlei-song. Henceforth he is
only to see things in the light it chooses to shed upon them. Let your
Alchemist but seek his Elixir long enough for the poison to fairly fill his
veins, and behold what a slave and a monster the Idea shall make of him!
Projection awaits him; the elements are here, commingling _in balneo
Mariae_; already _Rosa Solis_ lends its generative warmth; already hath _Leo
Rubeus_ wooed and won his lily bride; already hath the tincture headed up
royally in ruby and in purple, and sublimed, and gone through the entire
circle of embryonic processes: quick! there lacks but the one element; in
with it, and we are masters of the Life-Secret, of wealth, and power, and
all else the world can bestow,--ay, and we can give back to the world all
it asks! Yes, but that element is _Sanguis Virginis_. Well, and why not a
virgin's blood? Great things must be purchased,--cannot be plucked, like
fruit, from every tree.
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