I seemed to be sitting in the dust, as in inmost Asia a sick man may crouch abandoned, while the caravan in which all his earthly hopes are centred goes inexorably upon its way. The blue sky flushes to deep purple before him; night falls; all colour is swallowed up in darkness, until the jingling camel-bells receding up the pass cross the dividing ridge, and for him the last silence is begun. Such then was the end of youthful ambition: for food a mouthful of ashes instead of the very marrow of joy; for home not the free ocean, but a stagnant pool ringed with weeping willows, a log's fit floating-place. Here to float, marking the weed creep onward until all from bank to bank was overfilmed, and there remained no clear water of space for reflection of a single star: to float, and feel the sodden fibres of life loosening in slow decay--this was to be the last state of the seedling which had sprung up on the mountain slopes with promise of mighty stem and overarching branches full of sap like the cedars of the Lord. My life henceforth was to be ringed round and overhung with so heavy an air that joy and fancy should never fly in it, but fall dead as the birds above Avernus according to the ancient story. I seemed to see nothing upon the path of the future but the stern form of Renunciation drawing between me and the living world the impassable circle of death in life, the _ultima linea rerum_. It was the last decree, the irrevocable sentence, the absolute end: and I had not yet reached half the Psalmist's span; I had not yet forgotten the lost summer mornings when the breeze scented with lilac came blowing through the casement, bearing with it the sound of glad voices welcoming the day.