Page:Henry Northcote (IA henrynorthcote00snairich).pdf/33

 the fervor of his nature, like others who had sought their opportunity had done so often?

He could not understand this fever which had stretched him upon the rack. It might be that the lack of the meanest necessaries had told too severely upon his frame. Indeed, he was starving by degrees. His limbs—huge, knotted things—had withered until he was ashamed. His skin was so pale, his cheeks so wasted, that when his eyes flamed out in all their cadaverous lustre the prosperous shrank from him as though he were a ghost or a leper.

However, he did not covet the heritage of others. Sharp as his belly was to-night, ragged as was his back, he must not purchase the cuisine and raiment of princes at the price that was asked. Were he to inhabit the body of Crœsus, he would have also to inhabit his soul. Throned amid pomp, he would have dined that evening to the strains of Beethoven under the shadows of Velasquez and Raphael. He would have eaten the manna of the wilderness served upon gold plate; have drunk the fabulous Falernian, with pearls from the Orient dissolved in it to heighten the bouquet. Gorgeous houris, whose eyes and jewels were jealous of one another, whose breaths were perfumed, whose lips were laden with music, would have been on his right hand and on his left. Yet he would neither have seen, nor heard, nor felt, nor tasted; for those who partook of such a feast could neither know nor understand.

He must not barter his hunger for a feast such as that. No ray of meaning ever invaded this crapulous Barmecide. All that he saw was that