Chapter VIII: Part TWO: The End of Light Winning (3)

“St. Paul stoned Stephen the Protomartyr, St. Vitalis of Ravenna and St. Torpet of Pisa both served under Nero, that arch-persecutor of the faithful, and St. Longinus conducted the Crucifixion. No, Florian: no, I admit that at first I was a trifle uncertain. For I did remember some incidents that were capable of misconstruction and exaggeration, and people talk too much upon this side of the grave for burial quite to cure them of the habit. But since moving more widely among the elect, it has been extremely gratifying to find my past as blameless as that of most other holy persons.”

“—You, after all these enormities, I say, have been canonized by the lost tail of an R, and through mistake have been fitted out with a legend in which there is no word of truth—”

“The histories of many of my more immaculate confrères have that same little defect. St. Hippolytus, who never heard of Christianity, since he lived, if at all, several hundred years before the Christian era, was canonized by a mistake. St. Filomena’s legend rests upon nothing save the dreams of a priest and an artist, who were thus favored with unluckily quite incompatible revelations. The name of St. Viar was presented for beatification because of a time-disfigured tombstone, like mine, a stone upon which remained only part of the Latin word _viarum_: and two syllables of a road-inspector’s vocation were thus esteemed worthy of being canonized. The record of St. Undecimilla was misread as relating to eleven thousand virgins, and so swelled the Calendar with that many saints who were later discovered never to have existed. No, Florian, mistakes seem to occur everywhere, in awarding the prizes of celestial as well as earthly life: but not even those of the elect who have without any provocation been thrust into the highest places of heaven ought to complain, for one never really gains anything by being hypercritical.”

“Why, then, monsieur, I say that all these legends—”

“You are quite wrong. They are excellent legends. I know that, for one, I have been moved to tears and to the most exalted emotions of every kind through considering my own history. What boy had ever a more edifying start in life than that ten years of meditation in a barrel? It was not a beer barrel either, I am sure, for stale beer has a vile odor. No, Florian, you may depend upon it, that barrel had been made aromatic by a generous and full-bodied wine, by a rather sweetish wine, I think—”

“Yes, but, monsieur—”

Still Hoprig’s rolling voice went on, unhurriedly and very nobly, and with something of the stateliness of an organ’s music: and in the saint’s face you saw unlimited benevolence, and magnanimity, and such deep and awe-begetting wisdom as seemed more than human.

And Hoprig said: “Wonder awakens in me when I consider my travels, and stout admiration when I regard the magnificence of my deeds. Why, but, my son, I defied two emperors to their pagan faces, I sailed in a stone trough beyond the sunset, I killed five dragons, I forget how many barbarous tribes I converted, and I intrepidly went down into Pohjola and into the fearful land of Xibalba, among big tigers and blood-sucking bats, to the rescue of my poor friend Hork! Now I consider these things with a pride which is not selfish, but with pride in the race and in the religion which produces such heroism: and I consider these things with tears also, when I think of my steadfastness under heathen persecution. Do you but recall, my dear child, what torments I endured! I was bound to a wheel set with knives, I was given poison to drink, I was made to run in red-hot iron shoes, I was cast into quicklime—But I abridge the list of my sufferings, for it is too harrowing. I merely point out that the legend is excellent.”

“But, monsieur, this legend is not true.”

“The truth, my son,” replied the saint, “is that which a person, for one reason or another, believes. Now if I had really been put to the horrible inconvenience of doing all these splendid things, and they had been quite accurately reported, my legend would to-day be precisely what it is: it would be no more or less than the fine legend which piety has begotten upon imagination. You will grant that, I hope?”

“Nobody denies that. It is only—”

“Then how can it to-day matter a pennyworth whether or not I did these things?” asked the saint, reasonably.

“Well, truly now, Monsieur Hoprig, the way you put it—”

“I put it, my son, in the one rational way. We must zealously preserve those invigorating stories of the heroic and virtuous persons who lived here before our time so gloriously, because people have need of these excellent examples. It would be a terrible misfortune if these stories were not known everywhere, and were not always at hand to hearten everybody in hours of despondency by showing what virtuous men can rise to at need. These examples comfort the discouraged with a sentiment of their importance as moral beings and of the greatness of their destinies. So, since the actual living of men has at no time, unluckily, afforded quite the necessary examples, the philanthropic historian selects, he prunes, he colors, he endeavors, like any other artist, to make something admirable out of his raw material. The miracles which the painter performs with evil-smelling greases, the sculptor with mud, and the musician with the intestines of a cat, the historian emulates through the even more unpromising medium of human action. And that is as it should be: for life is a continuous battle between the forces of good and evil, and news from the front ought to be delivered in the form best suited to maintain our morale. Yes, it is quite as it should be, for fine beliefs do everybody good.”

“Parbleu, monsieur, I cannot presume to argue with you; but this sort of logic is unsettling. It is also unsettling to reflect that all the magnificent gifts I have been offering to your church were sheer waste, since you have not been at your post attending to the forgiveness of my irregularities. You conceive, monsieur, I had kept very exact accounts, with an equitable and even generous assessment for every form of offence; and to find that all this painstaking has gone for nothing has upset my conscience.”

“That is probable. Still, I suspect that famous conscience of yours is as much good to you upset as in any other position.”

“Well, but, monsieur, now that my other troubles seem in every likelihood to approach a settlement,” said Florian, caressing the pommel of Flamberge, “what would you have me do about rectifying my unfortunate religious status?”

The saint looked now at Florian for a long while. In the great shining pale blue eyes of Hoprig was much of knowledge and of pity. “You must repent, my son. What are good works without repentance?”

“A pest! if that is all which is needful, I shall put my mind to it at once,” said Florian, brightening. “And doubtless, I shall find something to repent of.”

“I think that more than probable. What is certain is that I have no more time to be wasting on you. I have given you my fair warning, in the most delicate possible terms, without even once alluding to my enjoyment of thaumaturgic powers and my especial proficiency in blasting, cursing and smiting people with terrible afflictions. I prefer, my dear child, to keep matters on a pleasant footing as long,” the saint said meaningly, “as may prove possible. So I have not in any way alluded to these little personal gifts. I have merely warned you quite affably that, for the sake of my celestial credit, I intend to put up with no wickedness from you; and I have duly called you to repentance. With these duties rid of, I can be off to Morven. After having seen, during the last five months, as much of this modern world as particularly appeals to a saint in the prime of life, I am establishing a hermitage upon Morven.”

“And for what purpose, may one ask?” Florian was reflecting that Morven stood uncomfortably near to Bellegarde.

The saint regarded Florian with some astonishment. “One may ask, to be sure, my son: but why should one answer?”

“Well, but, monsieur, Morven is a place of horrible fame, a place which is reputed still to be given over to sorcery—”

“I would feel some unavoidable compassion for any sorcerer that I caught near my hermitage: but, none the less, I would do my duty as a Christian saint with especial proficiency—”

“—And, monsieur, you would be terribly lonely upon Morven.”

It appeared to Florian that the saint’s smile was distinctly peculiar. “One need never be lonely,” St. Hoprig stated, “when one is able to work miracles.”

With that he slightly smacked his lips and vanished.

And Florian remained alone with many and firm grounds for depression, and with forebodings which caused him to look somewhat forlornly at the sword Flamberge. For there seemed troubles ahead with which Flamberge could hardly cope.

_19._

_Locked Gates_

Florian did not at once set forth for Bellegarde, to make the utmost of the four months of happiness he might yet hope to share with Melior. Instead, he despatched a very loving letter to his wife, lamenting that business matters would prevent his returning before February.

Meanwhile he had gone to the Hôtel de Puysange. Along with Clermont, Simiane, the two Belle-Isles, and all the rest of Orléans’ fraternity of roués, Florian found himself evicted from Versailles. His rooms there had already been assigned to the de Pries, by the new minister, Monsieur de Bourbon, whom Florian esteemed to have acted with unbecoming promptness and ingratitude.

Florian, in any event, went to the Hôtel de Puysange, where he lived rather retiredly for a month. He did not utterly neglect his social duties between supper-and breakfast-time. But during the day he excused himself from participation in any debauchery, and save for three trivial affairs of honor,—in which Florian took part only as a second, and killed only one of his opponents, an uninteresting looking young Angevin gentleman, whose name he did not catch,—with these exceptions, Florian throughout that month lived diurnally like an anchorite.

Nobody could speak certainly of what went on in the day-time within the now inhospitable gates of the Hôtel de Puysange, but the rumors as to Florian’s doings were on that account none the less numerous.

It was public, in any event, that he had retained Albert Aluys, the most accomplished sorcerer then practising in the city. What these two were actually about at this time, behind the locked gates of the Hôtel de Puysange, remains uncertain, for Florian never discussed the matter. Aluys, when questioned,—though the value of his evidence is somewhat tempered by his known proficiency and ardor at lying,—reported that Monsieur the Duke made use of his services only to evoke the most famous and beautiful women of bygone times. That was reasonable enough: but, what the deuce! once these marvelous creatures were materialized and ready for all appropriate employment, monseigneur asked nothing of the loveliest queens and empresses except to talk with him. It was not as if he got any pleasure from it, either: for after ten minutes of the prettiest woman’s talking about how historians had misunderstood her with a fatuity equalled only by that of her husband and his relatives, and about what had been the true facts in her earthly life,—after ten minutes of these friendly confidences, monseigneur would shake his head, and would sometimes groan outright, before he requested that the lady be returned to her last home.

Monseigneur, in point of fact, seemed put out by the circumstance that these ladies manifested so little intelligence. As if, a shrugging Aluys demanded of Heaven’s common-sense, it were not for the benefit of humanity at large that all beautiful women were created a trifle stupid. The ladies whom one most naturally desired to seduce were thus made the most apt to listen to the seducer: for the good God planned the greatest good for the greatest number.

When February had come, and Florian might hope to share with Melior only three more months of happiness, Florian sent a letter to his wife to bewail the necessity of his remaining away from home until March. The rumors as to his doings were now less colorful but equally incredible. Yet nothing certainly was known of his pursuits, beyond the fact that Aluys reported they were evoking the dead persons who had been most famed for holiness and other admirable virtues. And with these also Monsieur de Puysange seemed unaccountably disappointed.

For he seemed, Aluys lamented, really not to have comprehended that when men perform high actions or voice impressive sentiments, this is by ordinary the affair of a few moments in a life of which the remainder is much like the living of all other persons. Monsieur de Puysange appeared to have believed that famous captains won seven battles every week, that authentic poets conversed in hexameters, and that profound sages did not think far less frequently about philosophy than their family affairs. As if too, Aluys cried out, it were not very pleasant to know the littlenesses of the great and the frailties of the most admirable! Æschylus had confessed to habitual drunkenness, the prophet Moses stuttered, and Charlemagne told how terribly he had suffered with bunions. Monsieur de Puysange ought to be elated by securing these valuable bits of historical information, but, to the contrary, they seemed to depress him. He regretted, one judged, that his colloquies with the renowned dead revealed that human history had been shaped and guided by human beings. A romantic! was Aluys’ verdict: and you cannot cure that. The gentleman will have an unhappy life.

“His wives die quickly,” was hazarded.

“They would,” Aluys returned: “and it makes for the benefit of all parties.”

Upon the first day of March, when Florian could hope at most to share only two more months of happiness with Melior, Florian sent a letter to his wife announcing the postponement until April of his homecoming. And throughout this month too he lived in equal mystery, except that toward the end of March he entertained a party of young persons at a supper followed by the debauch just then most fashionable, a fête d’Adam.

“Let us not be epigrammatic,” Florian had said, at outset. “Love differs from marriage; and men are different from women; and a restatement of either of these facts is cleverness. It is understood that we are all capable of such revamping. So let us, upon this my birthnight, talk logically.”

They discussed, in consequence, the new world and the new era that was upon them. For Europe was just then tidying up the ruin into which the insane ambition of one man, discredited Louis Quatorze, had plunged civilization. All the conventions of society had given way under the strain of war, so that the younger generation was left without any illusions. Those older people, who had so boggled matters, had been thrust aside in favor of more youthful and more vigorous exponents of quite new fallacies, and everyone knew that he was privileged to live at a period in the world’s history hitherto unparalleled. So they had a great deal to talk over at supper, with the errors of human society at last triumphantly exposed, and with the younger generation at last permitted utter freedom in self expression, and with recipes for all the needful social regeneration obtainable everywhere.

“We live,” it was confidently stated, “in a new world, which can never again become the world we used to know.”

Thus it was not until the coming of spring that Florian rode away from the Hôtel de Puysange, wherein he had just passed the first actually unhappy period of Florian’s life. For this man had long and fervently cherished his exalted ideals: and since his boyhood the beauty of Melior and the holiness of Hoprig had been at once the criteria and the assurance of human perfectibility. To think of these two had preserved him in faith and in wholesome optimism: for here was perfect beauty and perfect holiness attained once by mankind, and in consequence not unattainable. To dream of these two had kept Florian prodigally supplied with lofty thoughts of human excellence. And these two had thus enriched the living of Florian with unfailing streams of soothing and ennobling poesy, of exactly the kind which, in Hoprig’s fine phrase, was best suited to impress him with a sentiment of his importance as a moral being and of the greatness of man’s destiny.

Now all was changed. Now in the saint he found, somehow, a sort of ambiguity; not anything toward which one could plump a corporeal fore-finger, but, rather, a nuance of some indescribable inadequacy. Florian could not but, very respectfully and with profound unwillingness, suspect that any daily living, hour in and hour out, with Holy Hoprig—in that so awkwardly situated hermitage upon Morven,—would bear as fruitage discoveries woefully parallel to the results of such intimacy with Melior.

And of Melior her husband thought with even more unwillingness. At Bellegarde he had found her, to the very last, endurable. But now that Florian was again at court, the exigencies of his social obligations had drawn him into many boudoirs. One could not be uncivil, nobody would willingly foster a reputation for being an eccentric with a mania for spending every night in the same bed. In fact, a husband who had lost four wives in a gossip-loving world had obvious need to avoid the imputation of being a misogynist. So Florian followed the best-thought-of customs; and in divers bedrooms had, unavoidably and logically, drawn comparisons.

For at this time Florian was brought into quite intimate contact with many delightful and very various ladies: with Madame de Polignac, just then in the highest fashion on account of her victory in the pistol duel she had fought with Madame de Nesle; with La Fillon, most brilliant of blondes,—though, to be sure, she was no longer in her first youth,—who was not less than six feet in height; with Madame du Maine (in her Cardinal’s absence), who was the tiniest and most fairy-like creature imaginable; with La Tencin, the former nun, and with Emilie and La Souris, those most charming actresses; with Madame de Modena and the Abbess de Chelles, both of whom were poor Philippe’s daughters; with dashing Madame de Prie, who now ruled everything through her official lover, Monsieur de Bourbon, and who in the apartments from which Florian had been evicted accorded him such hospitality as soon removed all hard feeling; and with some seven or eight other ladies of the very finest breeding and wit. These ladies now were Florian’s companions night after night: it was as companions that he compared them with Melior: and his deductions were unavoidable.

He found in no tête-à-tête, and through no personal investigation, any beauty at all comparable to the beauty of Melior. This much seemed certain: she was the most lovely animal in existence. But one must be logical. She was also an insufferable idiot: she was, to actually considerate eyes, a garrulous blasphemer who profaned the shrine of beauty by living in it: and Florian was tired of her, with an all-possessing weariness that troubled him with the incessancy of a physical aching.

Time and again, in the soft arms of countesses and abbesses of the very highest fashion, even there would Florian groan to think how many months must elapse before he could with any pretence of decency get rid of that dreadful woman at Bellegarde. For the methods formerly available would not serve here: his pact with brown Janicot afforded to a man of honor no choice except to wait for the birth of the child that was to be Janicot’s honorarium, of the dear child, already beloved with more than the ordinary paternal fondness, whose coming was to ransom its father from so much discomfort. No, it was tempting, of course, to have here, actually in hand, the requisite and unique means for killing any of the Léshy. But to return to Bellegarde now, and to replace that maddening idiotic chatter by the fine taciturnity of death, would be a reprehensible action in that it would impugn the good faith of a Puysange. For to do this would be to swindle Janicot, and to evade an explicit bargain. One had no choice except to wait for the child’s birth.

So Florian stood resolutely, if rather miserably, upon his point of honor. He must—since a Puysange could not break faith, not even with a fiend,—carry out his bargain with Janicot, so far as went the reach of Florian’s ability. He could foresee a chance of opposition. Melior might perhaps have other views as to the proper disposal of the child: and Melior certainly had the charmed ring which might, if she behaved foolishly with it, overspice the affair with a tincture of Hoprig’s officiousness. And this at worst might result in some devastating miracle that would destroy Florian; and at best could not but harrow his conscience with the spectacle of a Duke of Puysange embroiled in unprecedented conflict with his patron saint.

His conscience, to be sure, was already in a sad way. Ever since the awakening of Hoprig, Florian had stayed quite profoundly conscience-stricken by the discovery that all the irregularities of his past remained unforgiven. That was from every aspect a depressing discovery. It had not merely a personal application: it revealed that in this world the most painstaking piety might sometimes count for nothing. It was a discovery which troubled your conscience, which darkened your outlook deplorably, and which fostered actual pessimism.

For what was he to do now? “Repent!” the saint had answered: it was the sort of saying one expected of a saint, and indeed, from Hoprig, who was secure against eternity, such repartees were natural enough. The serene physician had prescribed, but who would compound, the remedy? Florian himself was ready to do anything at all reasonable about those irregularities which had remained unforgiven through, as he must respectfully point out to inquirers, no remissness of his; he quite sincerely wanted to spare Heaven the discomfort of having a Duke of Puysange in irrevocable opposition: but he did not clearly see how repentance was possible. The great majority of such offences as antedated, say, the last two years had, after putative atonements, gone out of his mind, just as one puts aside and forgets about receipted bills: he could not rationally be expected to repent for misdemeanors without remembering them. That was the deuce of having placed unbounded faith in this—somehow—ambiguous Hoprig and in Hoprig’s celestial attorneyship.

Even such irregularities as Florian recalled seemed unprolific of actual repentance. Florian now comprehended that he—perhaps through a too careful avoidance of low company, perhaps, he granted, through a tinge of pharisaism,—had never needed to incite the funerals of any but estimable and honorable persons who were upon the most excellent footing with the Church. He could not, with his rigid upbringing, for one instant doubt that all these had passed from this unsatisfactory world to eternal bliss. He could not question that he had actually been the benefactor of these persons. The only thing he could be asked to repent of here was a benevolent action, and to do that was, to anyone of his natural kindliness, out of all thinking.

His irregularities in the way of personal friendship, too, appeared, upon the whole, to have resulted beneficially. Girls and boys that he had raised from sometimes the most squalid surroundings, even rescuing them in some cases from houses of notorious ill fame, had passed from him to other friends, and had prospered. Louison had now her duke, Henri his prince, and little Sapho her princess of the blood royal,—and so it went. All were now living contentedly, in opulence, and they all entertained the liveliest gratitude for their discoverer. You could not repent of having given the ambitious and capable young a good start in life. Among Florian’s married friends of higher condition, among a host of marquises and duchesses and countesses, his passing had tinged the quiet round of matrimony with romance, had left a plenitude of pleasant memories, and not infrequently had improved the quality of that household’s progeny. Here too he had in logic to admit he had scattered benefactions, of which no kindly-hearted person could repent.

He had never, he rather wistfully reflected, either coveted or stolen anything worth speaking of: he might have had some such abominable action to repent of, if only he had not always possessed a plenty of money to purchase whatever he fancied. That over-well filled purse had also kept him from laboring upon the Sabbath, or any day. And it had, by ill luck, never even occurred to him to worship a graven image.

Nor had it ever occurred to him to break his given word. Philippe, he remembered, had referred to that as being rather queer, but it did not seem queer to Florian: this was simply a thing that Puysange did not do. The word of honor of a Puysange, once given, could not in any circumstances be broken: to Florian that was an axiom sufficiently obvious.

He had told many falsehoods, of course. For an instant the reflection brightened him: but he found dejectedly, on looking back, that all these falsehoods appeared to have been told either to some woman who was chaste or to some husband who was suspicious, entirely with the view of curing these failings and making matters more pleasant for everybody. A Puysange did not lie with the flat-footed design of getting something for himself, because such deviations from exactness, somehow, made you uncomfortable; nor through fear, because a Puysange, quite candidly, did not understand what people meant when they talked about fear.

No, one must be logical. Florian found that his sins—to name for once the quaint term with which so many quaint people would, he knew, label the majority of his actions,—seemed untiringly to have labored toward beneficence. Florian was not prepared to assert that this established any general rule: for some persons, it well might be that the practise of these technical irregularities produced actual unhappiness: but Florian was here concerned just with his own case. And it did not, whatever a benevolent saint advised,—and ought, of course, in his exalted position to advise,—it did not afford the material for any rational sort of repentance. And to prevaricate about this deficiency, or to patch up with Heaven through mutual indulgence some not quite candid compromise, was not a proceeding in which Florian cared to have part, or could justify with honorable precedents. Say what you might, even though you spoke from behind the locked gates of paradise, Puysange remained Puysange, and wholly selfish and utilitarian lying made Puysange uncomfortable.

In fine, Florian earnestly wanted to repent, where repentance was so plainly a matter of common-sense, and seemed his one chance for an inexcruciate future: but the more he reflected upon such of his irregularities as he could for the life of him recollect, the less material they afforded him for repentance. No, one must be logical. And logic forced him to see that under the present divine régime there was slender hope for him. So his conscience was in these days in a most perturbed state: he seemed to be deriving no profit whatever from a wasted lifetime of pious devotion: and the more widely he and Aluys had conducted their investigations, the less remunerative did Florian everywhere find the pursuit of beauty and holiness.

_20._

_Smoke Reveals Fire_

Thus it was not until the coming in of spring that Florian rode away from the Hôtel de Puysange, riding toward Bellegarde and the business which must be discharged. Florian went by way of Storisende, the home of his dead brother, for Florian’s son still lived there, and Florian now felt by no means certain he would ever see the boy again, now that Holy Hoprig roosted over the Bellegarde to which Florian returned.

Florian came to Storisende unannounced, as was his usage. Madame Marguerite de Puysange and Raoul’s children kept her chamber, with a refusal to see Florian which the steward, to all appearance, had in transmission considerably censored. Florian thought that this poor fellow faced somewhat inadequately the problem of the proper demeanor toward a great peer who had very recently killed your master; and that too much fidgeting marred his endeavor to combine the politeness appropriate to a duke with the abhorrence many persons feel to be demanded by fratricide.

Meanwhile the father wished to know of his son’s whereabouts. Monsieur the Prince de Lisuarte had left the house not long after breakfast, it was reported, and might not return until evening. Florian shrugged, dined alone, and went out upon the south terrace, walking downward, into gardens now very ill tended. Raoul had let the gardens fall from their old, well remembered, sleek estate....

So much of Florian’s youth had been passed here that with Florian went many memories. He had made love to a host of charming girls in this place, in these gardens which were now tenantless and half ruined: and none of these girls had he been able to love utterly, because of his mad notions about Melior. He comprehended now of how much he had been swindled by this lunacy. His dislike of Melior—of that insufferable bright-colored imbecile,—rose hot and strong.

So many women had been to him only the vis-à-vis in a pleasurable coupling, when he might have got from them the complete and high insanity which other lads got out of loving! He remembered, for example, another April afternoon in this place, the April before his first marriage.... Yes, it had happened just yonder.

Florian turned to the right, passing the little tree from the East, which seemed no bigger now than he remembered it in boyhood; and then trampled through a thick undergrowth which hid what he remembered as a trim lawn. Raoul had really let the gardens fall into a quite abominable state. A person who had taken no better care of Storisende had not deserved to inherit such a fine property: and Florian remembered now with some compunction how easily, when he disposed of their father, he could also have disposed of their father’s foolish will. But Florian too, as he admitted, had always spoiled Raoul.

Florian came to a boulder some four feet in height, before which stood a smaller rock that was flat-topped and made a natural seat. Both were overgrown with patches of gray-green lichen. He looked downward. Against the boulder, partly hidden by old withered leaves, lay two flat stones which were each near a foot in length and about an inch thick, two valueless unextraordinary stones which he remembered.

He lifted these stones. Where they had lain, the ground showed dark and wet, and was perforated with small holes. The raising of the first stone disclosed a bloodless yellow centipede, which flustered and wavered into hiding among the close-matted dead leaves. Under the other stone, a great many ants were hastily carrying their small white eggs into those holes in the ground. Some twenty gray winged ants remained clustering together futilely. There was adhering to the under side of this second stone a clotted web. Florian saw the evicted spider, large and clumsy looking but very quick of movement, trundling away from molestation much as the centipede had fled.

It seemed to him that no life ought to be in this place; not even the life of insects should survive in this ruined haunt of memories. He set the two rocks at right angles to the boulder, just as he and a girl, who no longer existed anywhere, had placed them eighteen years ago. Moss had grown upon the boulder, so that the rocks did not fit against it so snugly as they had done once, but they stood upright now a foot apart. Florian gathered five fallen twigs, broke them, and piled the fragments in this space. From his pocket he took a letter, from the Abbess de Chelles, which he crumpled and thrust under the twigs. He took out flint and steel, and struck a spark, which fell neatly into the crevice between his left thumb and the thumbnail. The pensive gravity of his face was altered as he said “Damn!” and sucked at his thumb. Then he tried again, and soon had there just such a tiny fire as he and that dark-haired girl had once kindled in this place.

He sat there, feeding the small blaze with twigs and yet more twigs: and through his thinking flitted thoughts not wholly seized. But this fire was to him a poem. So went youth, and by and by, life. Brief heat and bluster and brilliancy, a little noise, then smoke and ashes: then youth was gone, with all its sparkle and splutter. You were thirty-six: you still got love-letters from abbesses of the blood royal, but your heart was a skuttle of cold cinders. And all that which had been, in these gardens and in so many other places, did not matter to you. It probably did not matter to anybody, and never had mattered. Yes, like this tiny blazing here, so went youth, and by and by, life....

“Why, what the devil, my friend—!”

Someone was speaking very close at hand. Florian looked up, strangely haggard, looked into the face of his son Gaston. The young Prince de Lisuarte was not alone, for a little behind him stood a dark-haired staring peasant girl. She was rather pretty, in a fresh and wholesome way that acquitted her of rational intelligence; and her bodice, Florian noted, had been torn open at the neck. Well, after all, Gaston was sixteen.

“My father!” the boy said now. But Florian observed with approval that the embarrassment was momentary. “This is in truth a delightful surprise, monsieur,” Gaston continued. “We saw the smoke, and could not imagine what caused it here in the park—”

“So that,” said Florian, “you very naturally investigated—”

He was reflecting that, after all, he was not answerable, and owed no explanation, to his son for making a small fire in the spring woods. That was lucky, for the boy would not understand the poetry of it. Florian saw too with approval that the young woman had disappeared. For her to have remained would have been wholly tactless, since it would have committed him to some expression of elevated disapproval. As it was, he needed only to rise and shake hands with this tall son of his, and then sit down again.

Gaston was rather picturesquely ugly: he indeed most inconsiderately aspersed his grandmother’s memory by this injudicious resemblance to the late King of England whom rumor had credited with the begetting of Gaston’s mother. Carola, though, had been quite pretty. Florian thought for a while of his first wife with less dislike than he had entertained toward her for years. Still, he perceived, he did not actually like this tall boy who waited before him, all in black. That would be for Raoul....

“My son,” said Florian, slowly, “I am on my way homeward to dispose of an awkward business in which there is an appreciable likelihood of my getting my death. So the whim took me to see you, it may be, for the last time.”

“But, monsieur, if there is danger you should remember that I count as a man now that I am seventeen next month. I have already two duels to my credit, I must tell you, in which I killed nobody, to be sure, but gave very handsome wounds. So may I not aid in this adventure?”

“Would you fight then in my defence, Gaston?”

“Assuredly, monsieur.”

“But why the devil should you? Let us be logical, Gaston! You loved that handsome hulking uncle of yours, not me, as people are customarily supposed to love their fathers: and I have recently killed him. Your damned aunt, I know, has been telling you that I ill-treated and murdered your mother also. To cap all, you have a great deal to gain by my death, for you are my heir. And I am too modest to believe that my engaging qualities have ever ensnared you into any personal affection.”

The boy reflected. “No, there has been no love between us. And they say you are wicked. But I would fight for you. I do not know why.”

Florian smiled. He nodded his head, in a sort of unwilling approval. “We come of a queer race, my son. That is the reason you would fight in my cause. It is also a reason why we may speak candidly.”

“Is candor, monsieur, quite possible between father and son?”

Florian liked that too, and showed as much. He said: “All eccentricities are possible to our race. There are many quaint chronicles to attest this, for there has always been a Puysange somewhere or another fluttering the world. To-day I am Puysange. To-morrow you will be Puysange. So I sit here with my little blaze of spluttering twigs already half gray ashes. And you stand there, awaiting my leisure, I will not ask how patiently.”

“I regard you, monsieur, with every appropriate filial sentiment. But you can remember, I am afraid, just what that comes to.”

“I remember most clearly. In these matters we are logical. So it is the defect of our race not ever to love anybody quite whole-heartedly; and certainly we are not so ill-advised as to squander adoration upon one another. Rather, we must restively seek everywhither for our desire, even though we never discover precisely what is this desire. That also, Gaston, is logic: for we of Puysange know, incommunicably but very surely, that this unapprehended desire ought to be gratified. It is this lean knowledge which permits us no rest, no complacent living in the usual drowsiness....”

“They tell me, monsieur, that we derive this trait from that old Jurgen who was our ancestor, and from tall Manuel too, whose life endures in us of Puysange.”

“I do not know. I talked lately with a Monsieur Horvendile, who had extreme notions about an Author who compiles an endless Biography, of the life that uses us as masks and temporary garments. But I do not know. I only know that this life was given me by my father, without any knowledge as to what use I should preferably make of the unsought gift. I only know that I have handed on this life to you, on the same terms. Do with the life I gave you whatever you may elect. Now that I see you for the last time, my premonitions tell me, I proffer no advice. I shall not even asperse the effects of vice and evil-doing by protesting that I in person illustrate them. No, I am conscious of a little compassion for you, but that is all: I do not really care what becomes of you. So I proffer no advice.”

“Therein, monsieur, at least, you do not deal with me as is the custom of fathers.”

“No,” Florian replied. “No, I find you at sixteen already fighting duels and tumbling wenches in the spring woods: and I spare you every appropriate paternal comment. For one thing, I myself had at your age indulged in these amusements; in fact, at your age, with my wild oats sown, I was preparing to settle down to quiet domesticity with your mother: and for another thing, I cannot see that your escapades matter. It is only too clear to me as I sit here, with my little blaze of spluttering twigs already half gray ashes, that in a while you and your ardors and your adversaries and your plump wenches will be picked bones and dust about which nobody will be worrying. These woods will then be as young as ever: and nobody anywhere will be thinking about you nor your iniquities nor your good actions, or about mine either; but in this place every April will still be anemones.”

“Meanwhile I have my day, monsieur—”

“Yes,” Florian agreed,—“the bustling, restless and dissatisfying day of a Puysange. That is your right, it is your logical inheritance. Well, there has always been a Puysange, since Jurgen also made the most of day and night,—a Puysange to keep his part of the world atwitter until he had been taught, with bruises and hard knocks, to respect the great law of living. Yes, there has always been a Puysange at that schooling, and each in turn has mastered the lesson: and I cannot see how, in the end, this, either, has mattered.”

“But what, monsieur, is this great law of living?”

Florian for a moment stayed silent. He could see yonder the little tree from the East, already budding in the spring. He was remembering how, a quarter of a century ago, another boy had asked just this question just here. And living seemed to Florian a quite futile business. Men’s trials and flounderings got them nowhither. A wheel turned, that was all. Too large to be thought about, a wheel turned, without haste and irresistibly. Men clung a while, like insects, to that wheel. The wheel had come full circle. Now it was not Florian but Florian’s son who was asking of his father, “What is this great law of living?” And no response was possible except the old, evasive and cowardly answer. So Florian gave it. One must be logical, and voice what logic taught.

“Thou shalt not offend against the notions of thy neighbor,” Florian replied,—“or not, at least, too often or too openly. I do not say, mark you, my son, but that in private, and with the exercise of discretion, one may cultivate one’s faculties.”

“Yes, but, monsieur, I do not see—”

“No,” Florian conceded, with a smiling toward his tall son which was friendly but a little sad, “no, naturally you do not. How should you, infamous seducer of the peasantry, when this is a law which no young person anywhere is able to believe? Yet it is certain, dear child, that if you openly offend against these notions you will be crushed: and it is certain that if you honor them,—with, I am presupposing, a suitable appreciation of the charms of privacy and sympathetic companions,—then all things are permitted, and nobody will really bother about your discreet pursuing of your desires. A wise man will avoid, though, for his comfort’s health, all over-high and over-earnest desires.... This is the knowledge, Gaston, which every father longs to communicate to his son, without caring to confess that his own life has been such as to permit the acquiring of this knowledge.”

And the boy shook his head. “I understand your words. But your meaning, monsieur, I do not see....”