He came for the first time under the great enchantment which paralyzes the spirit and energy of the Celt.

He knew himself to be, as his people were, capable of spasms of enthusiasm, the victim of transitory burnings of soul.

But the curse was upon him--the inevitable curse of feeling too keenly and seeing too clearly to be strenuous and constant.

The flame would die down, the enthusiasm would vanish--it was vanishing from him, as he knew well--and leave him, not indeed content with common life, but patient of it, and to the very end sad with the sense of possibilities unrealized.
Yet it was not without many struggles and periods of return to the older emotions that Hyacinth surrendered his enthusiasm.

There still recurred to him memories of his father's vision of an Armageddon and the conception of his own part in it.