midnight
Huntsmen would know it , if the chase were not urgent to pull them at the tail of the running beast . Once or twice on board his yacht he might have known something like it , but the salt sea-breeze could not be disconnected from his companion Lord Feltre , and a thought of Feltre swung vapour of incense all about him . Breathing this air of the young sun 's kiss of earth , his invigoration repelled the seductions of the burnt Oriental gums . Besides , as he had told his friend , it was the sincerity of the Catholic religion , not the seductiveness , that won him to a form of homage -- the bend of the head of a foreign observer at a midnight mass . Asceticism , though it may not justify error , is a truth in itself , it is the essence extracted of the scourge , flesh vanquished ; and it stands apart from controversy . Those monks of the forested mountain heights , rambling for their herbs , know the blessedness to be found in mere breathing : a neighbour readiness to yield the breath inspires it the more . For when we do not dread our end , the sense of a free existence comes back to us : we have the prized gift to infancy under the piloting of manhood .