I bite the olive again. Again the bitter salt crisp ravishes my tongue. “If this be vanity,--vanity let it be.” The golden moments flit by and I heed them not. For am I not comfortably seated and eating an olive? Go hang yourself, you who have never been comfortably seated and eating an olive! My character evolves farther in its change. I am now bent on reckless sensuality, let happen what will. The fair earth seems to resolve itself into a thing oval and crisp and good and green and deliciously salt. I experience a feeling of fervent gladness that I am a female thing living, and that I have a tongue and some teeth, and salivary glands. Also this bit slips down my red gullet, and again the festive Stomach lifts up a silent voice in psalms and rejoicing. It is now an absolute monarchy with the green olive at its head. The kisses of the gastric juice become hot and sensual and convulsive and ecstatic. “Avaunt, pale, shadowy ghosts of dyspepsia!” says my Stomach. “I know you not. I am of a brilliant, shining world. I dwell in Elysian fields.” Once more I bite the olive. Once more is my tongue electrified. And the third stage in my temporary transformation takes place. I am now a gross but supremely contented sensualist. An exquisite symphony of sensualism and pleasure seems to play somewhere within me. My heart purrs. My brain folds its arms and lounges. I put my feet up on the seat of another chair. The entire world is now surely one delicious green olive. My mind is capable of conceiving but one idea--that of a green olive. Therefore the green olive is a perfect thing--absolutely a perfect thing. Disgust and disapproval are excited only by imperfections. When a thing is perfect, no matter how hard one may look at it, one can see only itself--itself, and nothing beyond. And so I have made my olive and my art perfect. Well, then, this third bit of olive slides down the willing gullet into my stomach. “And then my heart with pleasure fills.” The play of the gastric secretions is now marvelous. It is the meeting of the waters! It were well, ah, how well, if the hearts of the world could mingle in peace, as the gastric juices mingle at the coming of a green olive into my stomach! “Paradise! Paradise!” says my Stomach. Every drop of blood in my passionate veins is resting. Through my stomach--my _stomach_, do you hear--my soul seems to feel the infinite. The minutes are flying. Shortly it will be over. But just now I am safe. I am entirely satisfied. I want nothing, nothing. My inner quiet is infinite. I am conscious that it is but momentary, and it matters not. On the contrary, the knowledge of this fact renders the present quiet--the repose, more limitless, more intense. Where now, Devil, is your damnation? If this be damnation, damnation let it be! If this be the human fall, then how good it is to be fallen! At this moment I would fain my fall were like yours, Lucifer, “never to hope again.”