"It matters not, my son," said the hermit--"it matters not. Think you, that if Augustus had been written on that tablet, the letters of that word would have proved more durable than those that time has long effaced? Think you, that it would have given one hour of immortality?"
"Good father, you mistake!" said Philip, "and read me a homily on that where least I sin. None feels more than I the emptiness of fame. Those that least seek it, very often win; and those that struggle for it with every effort of their soul, die unremembered. 'Tis not fame I seek: I live in the present."
"What!" cried the hermit, "and bound your hopes to half-a-dozen morrows? The present! What is the present? Take away the hours of sleep--of bodily, of mental pain--of regrets for the past--of fears for the future--of all sorts of cares. And what is the present? One short moment of transitory joy--a point in the wide eternity of thought!--a drop of water to a thirsty man, tasted and then forgot!"
"'Tis but too true!" replied the king; "and even now, as I came onward, I dreamed of casting off the load of sovereignty, and seeking peace."'
The hermit gazed at him for a moment, and seeing that he spoke gravely--"It cannot be," he replied. "It must not be!"
"And why not?" demanded the king. "All your reasoning has tended but to that. Why should I not take the moral to myself?"
"It cannot be," replied the hermit; "because the life of your resolution would be but half an hour. It must not be, because the world has need of you.--Monarch! I am not wont to flatter, and you have many a gross and hideous fault about you; but, according to the common specimens of human kind, you are worthy to be king. It matters little to the world, whether you do good for its sake or your own. If your ambition bring about your fellow-creatures' welfare, your ambition is a virtue: nourish it. You have done good, O king! and you will do good; and therefore you must be king, till Heaven shall give you your dismissal. Nor did my reasoning tend, as you say, to make you quit the cares of the world; but only to make you justly estimate its joys, and look to a better immortality than that of earth--that empty dream of human vanity! Still you must bear the load of sovereignty you speak of; and, by freeing the people from the yoke of their thousand tyrants, accomplish the work you have begun. See you not that I, who have a better right to fly from the affairs of men, have come back from Auvergne at your call?"
"My good father," answered the king, "I would fain, as you say, take the yoke from the neck of the people; but I have not means. Even now, my finances are totally exhausted; and I sit upon my throne a beggar."
"Ha!" said the hermit; "and therefore 'tis you seek me? I knew of this before. But say, are your exigencies so great as to touch the present, or only to menace the future?"
"'Tis present--too truly present, my want!" replied the king. "Said I not, I am a beggar? Can a king say more?"