第29章

"I do not merit the trust you affect in my courage; but I am now on my guard against the cheats of the fancy, and the fumes of a vapor can scarcely bewilder the brain in the open air of this mountain land.I believe in no races like those which you tell me lie viewless in space, as do gases.I believe not in magic; I ask not its aids, and I dread not its terrors.For the rest, I am confident of one mournful courage--the courage that comes from despair.I submit to your guidance, whatever it be, as a sufferer whom colleges doom to the grave submits to the quack who says, 'Take my specific and live!' My life is naught in itself; my life lives in another.You and I are both brave from despair; you would turn death from yourself--I would turn death from one I love more than myself.Both know how little aid we can win from the colleges, and both, therefore, turn to the promises most audaciously cheering.Dervish or magician, alchemist or phantom, what care you and I? And if they fail us, what then? They cannot fail us more than the colleges do!"