"Heaven forbid," exclaimed the Count; "Heaven forbid, either that it should be so, or that such should be your real and mature opinion. You say that a minute acquaintance with the sources of enjoyment diminishes the gratification they afford. There is undoubtedly something lost in every case of such minute acquaintance; but it is by the loss of a peculiar and distinct source of pleasure accompanying every other enjoyment the first time it is tasted, and never going beyond. I mean novelty--the bloom upon the ripe plum, which renders it beautiful to the eye as well as refreshing to the taste--brush away the bloom, the plum is no longer so beautiful, but the taste no less refreshing. Setting aside the diminution made for the loss of that novelty, I deny your position."
The Chevalier laughed at his friend's eagerness.
"You will not surely deny, Morseiul," he said, "that there is no pleasure, no enjoyment, really satisfactory to the human heart; and, consequently, the more intimately we become acquainted with it, the more clearly do we see its emptiness."
"Had you said at the first," replied the Count, "that our acquaintance with pleasures show their insufficiency, I should have admitted the truth of your assertion; but to discover the insufficiency of one pleasure seems to me only a step towards the enjoyment of pleasures of a higher quality."
"But we may exhaust them all," said the Chevalier, "and then comes--what but satiety?"
"No," replied the Count, "not satiety, aspirations for and hopes of higher pleasures still; the last, the grandest, the noblest seeking for enjoyment that the universe can afford; the pursuit that leads us through the gates of the tomb to those abodes where the imperfections of enjoyment end, where the seeds of decay grow not up with the flowers that we plant, where the fruit is without the husk, and the music without the dissonance. This still is left us when all other enjoyments of life are exhausted, or have been tasted, or have been cast away, or have been destroyed. Depend upon it, Louis, that even the knowledge we acquire of the insufficiency of earth's enjoyment gives us greater power to advance in the scale of enjoyment; and that, if we choose to learn our lesson from the picture given us of the earthly paradise, we shall find a grand moral in the tree of eternal life having been planted by the tree of knowledge."
"But still, my dear Count," replied the Chevalier, "you seem still to approach to my argument, while you deny its force. If such be the result of satiety, as you say it is, namely, to lead us to the aspiration after higher enjoyments, till those aspirations point to another world, surely it is better to arrive at that result as soon as possible."
"No," replied the Count; "in the first place, I did not say that such was the result of satiety; I said that it was the result of discovering by experience the insufficiency of all earthly enjoyments to give perfect satisfaction to a high and immortal spirit and well-regulated mind. Satiety I hold to be quite the reverse of this; I hold it to be the degradation of our faculties of enjoyment, either by excessive indulgence, or by evil direction. The man who follows such a course of life as to produce any chance of reaching satiety, tends downward instead of upward, to lower rather than to higher pleasures, and exhausts his own capabilities, not the blessings of God. The opposite course produces the opposite result; we know and learn that all God's creations afford us some enjoyment, although we know and learn, at the same time, that it has been his will that none of those enjoyments upon earth should give complete and final satisfaction. Our capabilities of enjoying by enjoying properly are not blunted but acuminated; we fly from satiety instead of approaching it; and even while we learn to aspire to higher things, we lose not a particle of the power--except by the natural decay of our faculties--of enjoying even the slight foretaste that Heaven has given us here."
"Solomon, Solomon, Solomon!" said his companion, "Solomon was evidently a misanthrope either by nature or by satiety. He had seen every thing under the sun, and he pronounced every thing vanity--ay, lighter than vanity itself."
"And he was right," replied the Count; "every thing is lighter than vanity itself, when comparing the things of this world with the things of eternity. But you know," he added with a smile, "that we Huguenots, as you call us, acknowledge no authority against the clear operation of reason, looking upon no man as perfect but one. If you were to tell me that it was right to put a friend in a dangerous place where he was sure to be killed for the purpose of marrying his widow, I should not a bit more believe that it was right, because David had done it; and even if you were to prove to me that through the whole writings of Solomon there was not, as I believe there is, a continual comparison between earthly things and heavenly things, I should still say that you were in the wrong; the satiety that he felt being a just punishment upon him for the excesses he committed and the follies to which he gave way, and by no means a proof of his wisdom, any more than those follies and excesses themselves. Long before we have exhausted the manifold pleasures which Heaven has given us here by moderate and virtuous enjoyment--long before we have even discovered by experience the insufficiency of one half that we may properly enjoy, the span of man's life is finished; and at the gates of death he may think himself happy, if, while he has learnt to desire the more perfect enjoyment of heavenly things, he has not rendered himself unfit for that enjoyment, by having depraved his faculties to satiety by excess."