for the smooth caress. For them too history was a tale like any other too often heard, their land a pawnshop.
Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a beldam’s hand in Argos or Julius Caesar not been knifed to death. They are not to be thought away. Time has branded them and fettered they are lodged in the room of the infinite possibilities they have ousted. But can those have been possible seeing that they never were? Or was that only possible which came to pass? Weave, weaver of the wind.
―Tell us a story, sir.
―Oh, do, sir. A ghoststory.
―Where do you begin in this? Stephen asked, opening another book.
― Weep no more, Comyn said.
―Go on then, Talbot.
―And the history, sir?
―After, Stephen said. Go on, Talbot.
A swarthy boy opened a book and propped it nimbly under the breastwork of his satchel. He recited jerks of verse with odd glances at the text:
―Weep no more, woful shepherd, weep no more For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead, Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor …
It must be a movement then, an actuality of the possible as possible. Aristotle’s phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated out into the studious silence of the library of Saint Genevieve where he had