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290
Zuleika Dobson; Or, An Oxford Love Story
·
Sir Max Beerbohm
168
“Vae
tibi,
vae
misero,
nisi
circumspexeris
artes
Femineas,
nam
nulla
salus
quin
femina
possit
Tradere,
nulla
fides
quin”--
“Quin,”
he
repeated.
In
writing
soliloquies,
his
trouble
was
to
curb
inspiration.
The
thought
that
he
was
addressing
his
heir-presumptive--now
heir-only-too-apparent--gave
him
pause.
Nor,
he
reflected,
was
he
addressing
this
brute
only,
but
a
huge
posthumous
audience.
These
hexameters
would
be
sure
to
appear
in
the
“authorised”
biography.
“A
melancholy
interest
attaches
to
the
following
lines,
written,
it
would
seem,
on
the
very
eve
of”...
He
winced.
Was
it
really
possible,
and
no
dream,
that
he
was
to
die
to-morrow--to-day?
Even
you,
unassuming
reader,
go
about
with
a
vague
notion
that
in
your
case,
somehow,
the
ultimate
demand
of
nature
will
be
waived.
The
Duke,
until
he
conceived
his
sudden
desire
to
die,
had
deemed
himself
certainly
exempt.
And
now,
as
he
sat
staring
at
his
window,
he
saw
in
the
paling
of
the
night
the
presage
of
the
dawn
of
his
own
last
day.
Sometimes
(orphaned
though
he
was
in
early
childhood)
he
had
even
found
it
hard
to
believe
there
was
no
exemption
for
those
to
whom
he
stood
in
any
personal
relation.
He
remembered
how,
soon
after
he
went
to
Eton,
he
had
received
almost
with
incredulity
the
news
of
the
death
of
his
god-father,
Lord
Stackley,
an
octogenarian....
He
took
from
the
table
his
album,
knowing
that
on
one
of
the
earliest
pages
was
inscribed
his
boyish
sense
of
that
bereavement.
Yes,
here
the
passage
was,
written
in
a
large
round
hand:
Marker
Marker
Fine marker
White-out
Fine white-out
Circle
Paint
Unmarker
Hand
Scalpel
Dice
Sieve
Purify
Undo
Redo
Start over
