"Still at work, Paul," said Rachel, as she entered; "how long do you
intend to work to-night?"
"Till the idea becomes dim, and the sense waxes thick," replied he, as
he turned his eyes upon her.
"I have something to tell you," she continued, as she sat down on a
chair between him and the fire, if that could be called such which
consisted of some red cinders.
"Some other wonder," replied he; "another cropping out of the workings
of fate."
Words these, as coming from our little artist, which require some
explanation, to the effect that Paul was a philosopher, too, in his own
way. Early misfortunes, which mocked the resolutions of a will never
very strong, had played into a habit of thinking, and brought him to the
conviction that every movement or change in the moral world, not less
than in the physical, is the result of a cause which runs back through
endless generations to the first man, and even beyond him. Paul was, in
short, a fatalist; not of that kind which romance writers feign in order
to make the character work through a gloomy presentiment of his own
destiny, but merely a believer in a universal original decree, the
workings of which we never know until the effects are seen. A fatalist
of this kind almost every man is, less or more, in some mood or another;
only, to save himself from being a puppet, moved by springs or drawn by
strings, he generally contrives to except his _will_ from the scheme of
the iron-bound necessity.
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