* * * * *
"Well, godmother, if you will pardon my frankness, I do not think it is quite nice to talk about such things, and certainly not with so much candor. However, dismissing these considerations of delicacy, let us revert to my original question. You have given me youth and all the appurtenances of youth: and therewith you have given, too, in your joking way—which nobody appreciates more heartily than I,—a shadow that renders all things not quite satisfactory, not wholly to be trusted, not to be met with frankness. Now—as you understand, I hope,—I concede the jest, I do not for a moment deny it is a master-stroke of humor. But, after all, just what exactly is the point of it? What does it mean?"
"It may be that there is no meaning anywhere. Could you face that interpretation, Jurgen?"
"No," said Jurgen: "I have faced god and devil, but that I will not face."
"No more would I who have so many names face that. You jested with me. So I jest with you. Probably Koshchei jests with all of us. And he, no doubt—even Koshchei who made things as they are,—is in turn the butt of some larger jest."
"He may be, certainly," said Jurgen: "yet, on the other hand—"
"About these matters I do not know. How should I? But I think that all of us take part in a moving and a shifting and a reasoned using of the things which are Koshchei's, a using such as we do not comprehend, and are not fit to comprehend."
"That is possible," said Jurgen: "but, none the less—!"
"It is as a chessboard whereon the pieces move diversely: the knights leaping sidewise, and the bishops darting obliquely, and the rooks charging straightforward, and the pawns laboriously hobbling from square to square, each at the player's will. There is no discernible order, all to the onlooker is manifestly in confusion: but to the player there is a meaning in the disposition of the pieces."
"I do not deny it: still, one must grant—"