dominates and cows us, we cower before it, we run to serve it. For it
works for all humanity alike.
At the same time, we want to be warlike tigers. That is the horror: the
confusing of the two ends. We warlike tigers fit ourselves out with
machinery, and our blazing tiger wrath is emitted through a machine. It
is a horrible thing to see machines hauled about by tigers, at the mercy
of tigers, forced to express the tiger. It is a still more horrible
thing to see tigers caught up and entangled and torn in machinery. It is
horrible, a chaos beyond chaos, an unthinkable hell.
The tiger is not wrong, the machine is not wrong, but we, liars,
lip-servers, duplicate fools, we are unforgivably wrong. We say: 'I will
be a tiger because I love mankind; out of love for other people, out of
selfless service to that which is not me, I will even become a tiger.'
Which is absurd. A tiger devours because it is consummated in devouring,
it achieves its absolute self in devouring. It does not devour because
its unselfish conscience bids it do so, for the sake of the other deer
and doves, or the other tigers.
Having arrived at the one extreme of mechanical selflessness, we
immediately embrace the other extreme of the transcendent Self. But we
try to be both at once. We do not cease to be the one before we become
the other. We do not even play the roles in turn. We want to be the
tiger and the deer both in one. Which is just ghastly nothingness. We
try to say, 'The tiger is the lamb and the lamb is the tiger.' Which is
nil, nihil, nought.
The padrone took me into a small room almost contained in the thickness
of the wall. There the Signora's dark eyes glared with surprise and
agitation, seeing me intrude. She is younger than the Signore, a mere
village tradesman's daughter, and, alas, childless.
It was quite true, the door stood open. Madame put down the screw-driver
and drew herself erect. Her eyes were a flame of excitement. This
question of a door-spring that made the door fly open when it should
make it close roused a vivid spark in her soul. It was she who was
wrestling with the angel of mechanism.
She was about forty years old, and flame-like and fierily sad. I think
she did not know she was sad. But her heart was eaten by some impotence
in her life.
She subdued her flame of life to the little padrone. He was strange and
static, scarcely human, ageless, like a monkey. She supported him with
her flame, supported his static, ancient, beautiful form, kept it
intact. But she did not believe in him.
Now, the Signora Gemma held her husband together whilst he undid the
screw that fixed the spring. If they had been alone, she would have done
it, pretending to be under his direction. But since I was there, he did
it himself; a grey, shaky, highly-bred little gentleman, standing on a
chair with a long screw-driver, whilst his wife stood behind him, her
hands half-raised to catch him if he should fall. Yet he was strangely
absolute, with a strange, intact force in his breeding.
They had merely adjusted the strong spring to the shut door, and
stretched it slightly in fastening it to the door-jamb, so that it drew
together the moment the latch was released, and the door flew open.
We soon made it right. There was a moment of anxiety, the screw was
fixed. And the door swung to. They were delighted. The Signora Gemma,
who roused in me an electric kind of melancholy, clasped her hands
together in ecstasy as the door swiftly shut itself.
'_Ecco!_' she cried, in her vibrating, almost warlike woman's voice:
'_Ecco!_'
Her eyes were aflame as they looked at the door. She ran forward to try
it herself. She opened the door expectantly, eagerly. Pouf!--it shut
with a bang.
'_Ecco!_' she cried, her voice quivering like bronze, overwrought but
triumphant.
I must try also. I opened the door. Pouf! It shut with a bang. We all
exclaimed with joy.
Then the Signor di Paoli turned to me, with a gracious, bland, formal
grin. He turned his back slightly on the woman, and stood holding his
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