it rises before me.  The very nakedness of paper frightens me and drowns my looks.  Not I shall embellish that whiteness with writing like light.  I understand of what a great tribune’s sorrow is made; and I can only dream of him who, visibly summarizing the immense crisis of human necessity in a work which forgets nothing, which seems to forget nothing, without the blot even of a misplaced comma, will proclaim our Charter to the epochs of the times in which we are, and will let us see it.  Blessed be that simplifier, from whatever country he may come,—­but all the same, I should prefer him, at the bottom of my heart, to speak French.

Once more, he intervenes within me who first showed himself to me as the specter of evil, he who guided me through hell.  When the death-agony was choking him and his head had darkened like an eagle’s, he hurled a curse which I did not understand, which I understand now, on the masterpieces of art.  He was afraid of their eternity, of that terrible might they have—­when once they are imprinted on the eyes of an epoch—­the strength which you can neither kill nor drive in front of you.  He said that Velasquez, who was only a chamberlain, had succeeded Philip IV, that he would succeed the Escurial, that he would succeed even Spain and Europe.  He likened that artistic power, which the Kings have tamed in all respects save in its greatness, to that of a poet-reformer who throws a saying of freedom and justice abroad, a book which scatters sparks among humanity somber as coal.  The voice of the expiring prince crawled on the ground and throbbed with secret blows:  “Begone, all you voices of light!”

* * * * * *

But what shall we say?  Let us spell out the Magna Charta of which we humbly catch sight.  Let us say to the people of whom all peoples are made:  “Wake up and understand, look and see; and having begun again the consciousness which was mown down by slavery, decide that everything must be begun again!”

Begin again, entirely.  Yes, that first.  If the human charter does not re-create everything, it will create nothing.

Unless they are universal, the reforms to be carried out are utopian and mortal.  National reforms are only fragments of reforms.  There must be no half measures.  Half measures are laughter-provoking in their unbounded littleness when it is a question for the last time of arresting the world’s roll down the hill of horror.  There must be no half measures because there are no half truths.  Do all, or you will do nothing.

Above all, do not let the reforms be undertaken by the Kings.  That is the gravest thing to be taught you.  The overtures of liberality made by the masters who have made the world what it is are only comedies.  They are only ways of blockading completely the progress to come, of building up the past again behind new patchwork of plaster.