And I
admire and bow my head before the romance of destiny." Does not this
sentence read as if it were written in stress of some effusive febrile
emotion, as if he wrote while still pursuing his idea? And so it
reminds us of a moth fluttering after a light. But however
vacillating, the sentence contains some pretty clauses, and it will be
remembered though not perhaps in its original form. We shall forget
the "laughter and the tears" and the "sudden freshet," and a simpler
phrase will form itself in our memories. The emotion that Stevenson
had to express transpires only in the words, "romance of destiny,
ultimate islands." Who does not feel his destiny to be a romance, and
who does not admire the ultimate island whither his destiny will cast
him? Giacomo Cenci, whom the Pope ordered to be flayed alive, no doubt
admired the romance of destiny that laid him on his ultimate island, a
raised plank, so that the executioner might conveniently roll up the
skin of his belly like an apron. And a hare that I once saw beating a
tambourine in Regent Street looked at me so wistfully that I am sure
it admired in some remote way the romance of destiny that had taken it
from the woodland and cast it upon its ultimate island--in this case a
barrow.
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