“Perhaps it is the war of the spirit with the flesh, monsieur. Who knows, were a man of vigour not to reasonably indulge his senses, if his senses would not maliciously lead his judgment astray? Shall an anchorite prescribe for the hot fevers of life? I like to test the passions I would legislate on.”
“And you foresee the triumph of the races over their rulers?”
“I foresee the bursting of the dam of humour—the mad earth-wide guffaw in the sudden realisation of a preposterous anachronism. I see all the old landmarks swept away in a roar of laughter—the idols, the frippery, the traditions of respect for what is essentially mean and false, the egregious monkeys of convention solemnly dictating the laws of society to their own reflections in looking-glasses.”
“And what then?”
“The reign of reason, monsieur: the earth, with its flowers, for the children of its soil; the commonage of pastures, of woods, and of valleys; the adjustment of the relations of love and increase to the developments of nature; the death of shame, of artificiality, of ignoble sophistries.”
Ned shook his head. Was the man sincere in all this? Did he seek to adapt himself, with and in spite of his weaknesses, to what he considered the inevitably right? or were his repudiation of caste, his sacrifice of fortune, a mere wholesale bid for the notoriety that is so frantically sought of melodramatic souls? His voice was vibrant with enthusiasm; he seemed to lash himself into great utterances, to feel conviction through force of sound; and then in a moment he would (figuratively) swagger to the wings, cock his hat, and bury his face in a foaming tankard.
The two young men were strolling through a twilight of woodland. They had dined at four o’clock, had sat an hour or so over their bottle, and were then, by arrangement of St Denys, to present themselves at a certain rendezvous of local esprits forts.
“Thou shalt handle Promethean fire,” said the lord of Méricourt, “and shalt kindle in the glance of a goddess.”
“Very well,” answered Ned. “I will come, by all means; but she will not find me touchwood.”
They had mounted from the back of the village at the turning into the road of the chateau. A few hundreds of yards had brought them to the fringe of the dense forest that rolled in terraces of high green down to the very outskirts of the hamlet. Thence they had passed, by tracks of huddled leafiness, into deeps and profounder deeps of stillness.