And of
course the wicked crystals quarrel with the good ones.
ISABEL. Then do the good ones get angry?
L. No, never: they attend to their own work and life; and live it
as well as they can, though they are always the sufferers. Here,
for instance, is a rock crystal of the purest race and finest
temper, who was born, unhappily for him, in a bad neighborhood,
near Beaufort in Savoy; and he has had to fight with vile
calcareous mud all his life. See here, when he was but a child, it
came down on him, and nearly buried him; a weaker crystal would
have died in despair; but he only gathered himself together, like
Hercules against the serpents, and threw a layer of crystal over
the clay; conquered it,--imprisoned it,--and lived on. Then, when
he was a little older, came more clay; and poured itself upon him
here, at the side; and he has laid crystal over that, and lived
on, in his purity. Then the clay came on at his angles, and tried
to cover them, and round them away; but upon that he threw out
buttress-crystals at his angles, all as true to his own central
line as chapels round a cathedral apse; and clustered them round
the clay; and conquered it again. At last the clay came on at his
summit, and tried to blunt his summit; but he could not endure
that for an instant; and left his flanks all rough, but pure; and
fought the clay at his crest, and built crest over crest and peak
over peak, till the clay surrendered at last, and here is his
summit, smooth and pure, terminating a pyramid of alternate clay
and crystal, half a foot high!
LILY.
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