Thousands repeated his name in honour and looked to him for
their safety on the march, cursing those who led them astray against
his warning. In his place on that day, most men would have gone to the
Queen, expecting a great reward, if not claiming it outright. But he
was wandering alone at nightfall in the great plain, discontented with
all things, and most of all with himself. Everything he had done rose
up against him and accused him, instead of praising him and flattering
his vanity; every good deed had a base motive in his eyes, or was
poisoned by the thought that it had not been done for itself, but for
an uncertain something which came over him when the Queen spoke to him
or touched his hand. It is not only inactive men who grow morbid and
fault-finding with themselves; for the wide breach between the ideal
good and the poor accomplishment holds as much that can disappoint the
heart as the mean little ditch between thought and deed, wherein so
many weak good men lie stuck in the mud of self-examination. He who
stands at the edge of the limit, with a lifetime of good struggles
behind him, may be as sad and hopeless as he who sits down and weeps
before the mountain of untried beginnings. The joy of the earthly
future is for the very great and the very little. For as charity leads
mankind by faith to the hope of the life to come, so, on the mind's
side, by faith in its own strength, the work of genius in the past is
its own surety for like work to come.
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