"I imagine nothing!" he declared airily, "Everything is imagined for
me nowadays,--and imagination itself is like a flying Geni which
overtakes and catches the hair of some elusive Reality and turns its
face round, full-shining on an amazed world!"
"A pretty simile!" said Angela Sovrani, smiling.
"Is it not? Almost worthy of Paul Verlaine who was too 'inspired' to
keep either his body or his soul clean. Why was I not a poet!
Helas!--Fact so much outweighs fancy that it is no longer any use
penning a sonnet to one's mistress's eyebrow. One needs to write
with thunderbolts in characters of lightning, to express the wonders
and discoveries of this age. When I find I can send a message from
here to London across space, without wires or any visible means of
communication,--and when I am told that probably one of these days I
shall be able at will to SEE the person to whom I send the message,
reflected in space while the message is being delivered,--I declare
myself so perfectly satisfied with the fairy prodigies revealed to
me, that I have really no time, and perhaps no inclination to think
of any other world than this one."
"You are wrong, then," said the Cardinal, "Very wrong, Vergniaud. To
me these discoveries of science, this apparent yielding of invisible
forces into human hands, are signs and portents of terror.
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