=The Inevitable.=--The teacher said: "The question, 'What has one a right to feel remorse for?' is very complicated. I once followed the career of a foreign writer. I read his works, which seemed to belong to another world, with great admiration. His dramas all appeared to breathe a melancholy fear of some unknown terror that was bound to come. His philosophy was that of a saint. His landscapes seemed to be bathed not in common air but in pure æther. He was then about forty years old, and I expected every day to hear that he had gone into a convent. "But afterwards I heard he had married an actress, with whom he went about, and who appeared as a 'living statue' in one of his pieces. He also wrote new dramas for her, and now, when they became cynical and brutal, he achieved a greater popularity than he had ever been able to gain before. He degraded his person, his genius, his wife; and as he sank, I wept inwardly. One day I read in the paper that she had deserted him, but that may have been false. The thought of his fate tormented me; it seemed to have been predetermined. All his dramas written while he was still unmarried treated of this terrible thing which he foresaw and feared. It seemed to me as though he were compelled to take a mud-bath, and obliged to let himself be besmirched by life precisely in this way. It seemed as though he had not the right to ante-date heaven; as though he were not allowed to lead a pure, saintly life. It is terrible, because it is inexplicable." =The Poet's Sacrifice.=--The teacher continued: "This man's destiny reminds me of the Indian drama, _Urvasi_. A penitent who withdraws to solitude in order to purify his soul by renunciation, may finally attain such lofty spiritual heights that his power may become dangerous to the lower deities. In order to hinder such a penitent in his spiritual development, the god Indra sent an Apsara, a sort of celestial courtesan, in order to distract and seduce him.