It kept him young--to unbend, to play the fool in company such as theirs
and relax the fibres stiffened by conventionality; it refreshed him to
exchange the ephemeral for the eternal, the tomfoolery of social life
for Theocritus and his deathless creatures. How fair it was, this
smiling earth! How blithely the young voices went aloft!
They failed to drown those other strains, vagrant wraiths that now
floated upwards over fields and houses on the tepid wings of the
sirocco--fragmentary snatches, torn from the brazen measure of the
municipal band as it marched with the funeral procession. He cursed the
sounds from the bottom of his heart. They reminded him of that infamous
apparition, of all he most ardently desired to forget. His laughter
died down. Wanly he looked at his mirthful pagans, the embodiment of
joys. Yes; these were his distractions, his playmates, his elixir of
life, his antidote against the only disease, the only sin, crime, vice
which he recognized on earth--a vice none the less, because it happened
to be the inevitable--the vice of old age.
Pages:
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549