Intellect! which was given as the last plague--the brutes had been spared _that_. Thought warring with impulse; the love of beauty and of justice fighting the appetites and the body’s yearnings which impel our actions to the brutal struggle for life; contemplation upon the ignobleness of these appetites and base injustices and greeds impotent before the overwhelming lusts and impulses and emotions of the body. Imagination!--to shrink from the seething dunghill of the world. Was there any deliverance from this miserable tyranny of life? Only by boldly standing across the path of life and refusing to share in it. He opened the third book of the wisdom of Schopenhauer, and he found the two means that Pessimism has found, by denial, to accept life in full--art for art’s sake, and the asceticism of religion. By steeping self in the contemplation of the beauty of works of art, outside and aloof from self, in the contemplative pleasure of craftsmanship and artistry we may escape for awhile from the brutal urgings of our life, forget for awhile the brutal struggle for existence round about and at every hand, ignore the cruelty of the world. In the subtle pleasure that comes from a work of art can we alone be purely contemplative---- Yes--this Schopenhauer fellow had wisdom. The Youth put his hand upon the book, and by the gods he swore it, he would follow art for art’s sake. He would seek salvation from the tyranny of living in the contemplation of the beautiful. CHAPTER LXXIV _Which sees the Day break in the Tavern of_ The Golden Sun A misty dark night. The drizzle that slowly drenched the town met with but damp welcome the students and revellers as they poured out of the Bal Bullier at midnight; it sent them swarming into the genial warmth and cheery glitter of the cafés on the Boule Miche. And the inhospitable rain, having emptied the streets, slyly took itself off into the outer darkness and passed out of the city, leaving the trees weeping in the blackness. Noll, wearied by the frantic toolings of the students’ Bal Bullier, put up the collar of his coat, and finding that the drizzle no more wet his face, he strolled down the Boule Miche, struck across the cobbles of the riverside quays, and striding into the murk that hung about the river, he found himself on the bridge. He stood and leaned over the parapet, peering into the blackness of the foggy depths that swirled in pitchy fumes below. The yeasty stillness yielded a sob. A young woman’s voice near at hand spoke low. Aubrey’s voice answered her, impatiently. The fog carried every inflection of his drawling irritation and peevish insolence. He pshawed: