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the situation--apogee. Happiness, like the sea, has its high tide. The
worst thing for the perfectly happy is that it recedes.
There are two ways of being inaccessible: being too high and being too
low. At least as much, perhaps, as the first is the second to be
desired. More surely than the eagle escapes the arrow, the animalcule
escapes being crushed. This security of insignificance, if it had ever
existed on earth, was enjoyed by Gwynplaine and Dea, and never before
had it been so complete. They lived on, daily more and more ecstatically
wrapt in each other. The heart saturates itself with love as with a
divine salt that preserves it, and from this arises the incorruptible
constancy of those who have loved each other from the dawn of their
lives, and the affection which keeps its freshness in old age. There is
such a thing as the embalmment of the heart. It is of Daphnis and Chloë
that Philemon and Baucis are made. The old age of which we speak,
evening resembling morning, was evidently reserved for Gwynplaine and
Dea. In the meantime they were young.
Ursus looked on this love as a doctor examines his case. He had what was
in those days termed a hippocratical expression of face. He fixed his
sagacious eyes on Dea, fragile and pale, and growled out, "It is lucky
that she is happy." At other times he said, "She is lucky for her
health's sake." He shook his head, and at times read attentively a
portion treating of heart-disease in Aviccunas, translated by Vossiscus
Fortunatus, Louvain, 1650, an old worm-eaten book of his.
Dea, when fatigued, suffered from perspirations and drowsiness, and took
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