I should love
to burn them all, to raze all these galleries and museums to the ground,
and libraries with them. For what are libraries but storehouses of human
superstition and error? We must free ourselves from the past, free
ourselves utterly from its toils, if the future is to be ours. And we
shall never free ourselves from the past until we have forgotten it. Let
us leave here. I cannot stand it any longer! I do not know which is most
repugnant to me, the asceticism of these early Christians or the senseless
fantasies of the Greeks," and without further ado he fled.
Fired by this gospel of destruction, he spent his life wandering about
Europe, never resting for a month together, wrenching himself free from
all those ties which might curtail the freedom of his actions. Although
not fashioned by nature for enduring hardships, he alternately suffered
cold, hunger, heat, fatigue, privations, and dirt. In Paris one week,
making a brief sojourn in Spain the next, fleeing thence under warrant of
arrest to find himself some days later in hiding in Italy; at times in
prison, always in danger and uncertainty; starving one day, in fairly
flourishing conditions the next, never certain what fortune the morrow
might bring: thus the years went by, until, escaping from _domicilio
coatto_, or worse, in Italy, he had at length made his way to London
and the office of the _Tocsin_, quite broken down in health after the
long winter tramp.
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