More than once the thought of Vittoria filled him with
sudden dread. In her he had seen God and the world in one. The powerful
effect of this on so self-reliant a character, a man who had been unable
to find much sympathy with patrons and friends, to whom women had meant
nothing, may easily be imagined. All at once he had found a centre, and
more than that--a solution of all the discords of life, of the eternal
dualism of the earthly and the divine. His love was not the love of a
youth stretching out feelers to the world beyond, but the final creed of
a lonely life which had known nothing but beauty and divinity. With the
passion characteristic of him, he threw himself into this new experience
and made it his fate, flinging world and art aside. Before Vittoria he
ceased to be a sculptor and became a worshipper.
We realise the great difference between this worship and the worship of
Dante. The latter formed the consciousness of eternity, and became a
poet, early in life.
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