Page:Poetical works of Mathilde Blind.djvu/42

 16 that I can never forget it. He said I was too impatient, and demanded that the aims of my life should grow up in one night like mushrooms. I ought to make myself clear about life and the world, learn to understand their plan and results in general and particular. To this end he recommended, on the one hand, that I should carry on a serious study which should commence with astronomy, proceed to geology, and then to history from its first beginnings, in connection with philosophy, down to the present time. Naturally I have already begun, and was fairly dazzled with the infinite distances that opened out before me as if by magic. On the other hand, he said that I ought to examine my own character, which task is too often neglected in the crowd of daily events, and should strive in every way to advance spiritually. I spoke with extreme frankness; it is wonderful how one feels exactly how far a person, even if he speak no word, is really sympathetic to one. I parted from him at last with infinite peace in my soul, repeating to myself every word that I had heard. How this man, with his fire, his glowing eloquence, his holy zeal, carries one away! I hang with my whole soul upon his every word, I drink them all in with the same greediness with which a flower drinks in the rain, and I should like to remember every single word for ever."

Mazzini's tastes in scent and song deserve record, as characteristic of the ascetic nature of the man. "I do not," he said, "like the smell of a rose; it is eastern, it is sensuous; there is nothing rousing or stirring in the odour. I love the smell of the lily of the valley, it is so pure and fresh; and of the jasmine, because in it the two qualities of odour are represented; there is the eastern languishing, but also the rousing, pricking essence which is needed to neutralise the first; all things that are