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long battling with the Moor; they were proud, for they were
masters of the world; and they felt in themselves the wide
distances, the tawny wastes, the snow-capped mountains
of Castile, the sunshine and the blue sky, and the flower-
ing plains of Andalusia. Life was passionate and manifold,
and because it offered so much they felt a restless yearn-
ing for something more; because they were human they
were unsatisfied; and they threw this eager vitality of theirs
into a vehement striving after the ineffable. Athelny was
not displeased to find someone to whom he could read the
translations with which for some time he had amused his
leisure; and in his fine, vibrating voice he recited the can-
ticle of the Soul and Christ her lover, the lovely poem which
begins with the words en una noche oscura, and the noche
serena of Fray Luis de Leon. He had translated them quite
simply, not without skill, and he had found words which
at all events suggested the rough-hewn grandeur of the
original. The pictures of El Greco explained them, and they
explained the pictures.
Philip had cultivated a certain disdain for idealism. He
had always had a passion for life, and the idealism he had
come across seemed to him for the most part a cowardly
shrinking from it. The idealist withdrew himself, because
he could not suffer the jostling of the human crowd; he had
not the strength to fight and so called the battle vulgar;
he was vain, and since his fellows would not take him at
his own estimate, consoled himself with despising his fel-
lows. For Philip his type was Hayward, fair, languid, too
fat now and rather bald, still cherishing the remains of his

1 Of Human Bondage