That at
last, at last, he certainly hadn't it, to speak of, or had it but
in the scantiest measure--such, soon enough, as things went with
him, became the inference with which his old obsession had to
reckon: and this it was not helped to do by the more and more
confirmed appearance that the great vagueness casting the long
shadow in which he had lived had, to attest itself, almost no
margin left. Since it was in Time that he was to have met his
fate, so it was in Time that his fate was to have acted; and as he
waked up to the sense of no longer being young, which was exactly
the sense of being stale, just as that, in turn, was the sense of
being weak, he waked up to another matter beside. It all hung
together; they were subject, he and the great vagueness, to an
equal and indivisible law. When the possibilities themselves had
accordingly turned stale, when the secret of the gods had grown
faint, had perhaps even quite evaporated, that, and that only, was
failure. It wouldn't have been failure to be bankrupt,
dishonoured, pilloried, hanged; it was failure not to be anything.
Pages:
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67