Mountain Paths

Mountain Paths

IN that curious little masterpiece A Beleagured City, Mrs. Oliphant shows us the dead of a provincial town suddenly waxing indignant over the conduct and the morals of those inhabiting the town which they founded. They rise up in rebellion, invest the houses, the streets, the market-places and, by the pressure of their innumerable multitude, all-powerful though invisible, repulse the living, thrust them out of doors and, setting a strict watch, permit them to return to their roof-trees only after a treaty of peace and penitence has purified their hearts, atoned for their offences and ensured a more worthy future. [4]Undoubtedly a great truth underlies this fiction, which appears to us far-fetched because we perceive only material and ephemeral realities. The dead life and move in our midst far more really and effectually than the most venturesome imagination could depict. It is very doubtful whether they remain in their graves. It even seems increasingly certain that they never allowed themselves to be confined there. Under the tombstones where we believe them to lie imprisoned there are only a few ashes, which are no longer theirs, which they have abandoned without regret and which in all probability they no longer deign to remember. All that was themselves continues to have its being in our midst. How and under what aspect? After all these thousands, perhaps millions of years, we do not yet know; and no religion has been able to tell us with satisfying certainty, though all have striven to do so; but we may, by means of certain tokens, hope to learn. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 66893
Author: Maeterlinck, Maurice
Release Date: Dec 7, 2021
Format: eBook
Language: English
Publisher: Dodd, Mead and Company
Publication Date: 1919
Publisher Country: United States

Contributors

Translator: Teixeira de Mattos, Alexander, 1865-1921