A Fact Well Established

What a fool I've been!

One is apt to tell oneself that sort of thing when the fact is already well established, and also, not only without intending to undo one's folly, but even when one actually proposes to make it more! As Mr. Paxton did then.

He told himself, frankly, and with cutting scorn, what a fool he had been, and then proceeded to take what, under similar circumstances, seems to be a commonly accepted view of the situation—assuring, or endeavouring to assure himself, that to pile folly on to folly, until the height of it reached the mountain-tops, and then to undo it, would be easier than to take steps to undo it at once, while it was still comparatively a little thing.

It was perhaps this line of reasoning which induced Mr. Paxton to fancy himself in want of a drink.

—Richard Marsh, The Datchet Diamonds

Painting: Frans Hals the Elder (1580 – 1666), Dutch Golden Age master

The Height of Folly

Outrageous as it was to open a leaden coffin, to see if a woman dead nearly a week were really dead, it now seemed the height of folly to open the tomb again, when we knew, from the evidence of our own eyesight, that the coffin was empty. I shrugged my shoulders, however, and rested silent, for Van Helsing had a way of going on his own road, no matter who remonstrated. He took the key, opened the vault, and again courteously motioned me to precede. The place was not so gruesome as last night, but oh, how unutterably mean looking when the sunshine streamed in. Van Helsing walked over to Lucy's coffin, and I followed. He bent over and again forced back the leaden flange, and a shock of surprise and dismay shot through me.

There lay Lucy, seemingly just as we had seen her the night before her funeral. She was, if possible, more radiantly beautiful than ever, and I could not believe that she was dead. The lips were red, nay redder than before, and on the cheeks was a delicate bloom.

—Bram Stoker, Dracula

Painting: The Return of Persephone, Frederic Leighton

Persephone, the daughter of Zeus, was abducted by Hades to be queen of the Underground, but allowed to return to the surface of the earth for part of the year.