Mycroft! There was a brain, March! He never budged from his club, and he was a real mastermind and knew everything. So when Sherlock was stumped he came to Mycroft, who gave him the answer. You know the reason? Because Mycroft sat tighter than Sherlock. Sitting tight is power. The king sits on his prat, and the common folks are on their feet. Pascal says people get in trouble because they can't stay in their rooms. The next poet laureate of England--I figure --prays God to teach us to sit still. You know that famous painting of the gypsy Arab traveler sleeping with his mandolin and the lion gazing on him? That doesn't mean the lion respects his repose. No, it means the Arab's immobility controls the lion. This is magic. Passivity plus power. Listen to me, March, that old Rip van Winkle conked out on purpose." "Who took care of your aunt all that time?" "A Polack woman--Wadjka. And let me say that after the miracle was over my uncle was in a hell of a spot. Because he had arranged his life around my sleeping aunt. She slept, and he had his card parties and his honeybunch. After she woke we all pitied him." "As far as compassion goes," I said, "what about some for your aunt? She put in all that time, a chunk of her life like that. Like a long prison term practically." A smile began to draw Basteshaw's mustache. "I once was bugs on the history of art," he said. "Instead of being on the hustle in the summer, as my old man wanted, I'd slip away to the Newberry library where I'd be the only lad among eight or ten nuns at a reading table. I picked up a book by Ghiberti once, anyhow, and it made a great impression on me. He told about a German goldsmith of the Duke of Anjou who was the equal of the great sculptors of Greece. At the end of his life he had to stand by and watch his masterpieces melted down for bullion. His labor all in vain. He prayed on his knees, '0 Lord, creator of all, let me not follow after false gods.' Then he went into a monastery, this holy man, where he cashed in his chips and checked out for good." 0 blight! That the firm world should give out at the end of life. Blasted! But he had God to fall back on. And what if there had been no God for him? What if the truth should be even more terrible and furious? "So what was Aunt Ettl's sickness but a work of art? And just like this poor German fellow, she had to be prepared for failure. That's what they mean by the ruins of time Or go to Rome, which is the sepulcher. I suppose you know Shelley
Go thou to Rome at once the Paradise, The grave, the city, and the wilderness.
So works of art aren't eternal. So beauty is perishable. Didn't this saintly German wake up many mornings inspired, with joy in his heart? What more can you ask? He couldn't be both happy and sure of being right for eternity. You have to take your chance that being happy is also being right." I was with him there; I nodded with answering intelligence. I had a better opinion of him. There was something to him, after all. He had some nobility of heart and was a good guy in some mysterious respects. Though what a mixture! Meanwhile the boat sauntered through glassy stabs of light and wheewhocked on the steep drink. And then I had to bring to mind how many times, thinking myself right, I had been wrong. And wrong again. And wrong again. And again. And how long would I be right now? But I had great confidence in my love of Stella and her love of me. And then again, perhaps all matters of right and wrong would finish soon, as we might not survive. Points and crosses of diamond dazzled from the slopey blue ever-full waters. Fish and monsters did their business within. Some of our drowned were near, maybe, and passed beneath us. Now he talked of his aunt Etti as an artist and sounded pompous. Here it wasn't so many days ago that he was scarcely able to fiddle his legs, and shrunk down to nothing with fright, and now look at him, astride his mental powers, sweating and round-headed, sitting there so sturdy. "Why does an educated fellow like you ship out as carpenter?" I said, asking the question that