“It is well enough for you to philosophize and grin,” Michael returned, in lordly indignation. “But grinning settles few religious difficulties, and philosophy muddles them worse than ever. Yet, if you ask why I look solemn, it is because this saint here has become a scandal on earth, a nuisance in heaven, and an impossibility in hell. And after all our conferences we can find no place for him anywhere to-day.”
“Yet the affair is really very simple,” replied Janicot. “Let Hoprig and Melior, and their child too, return to Brunbelois and to the old time before he was a saint. Let them return to the high place and to the old time that is overpast now everywhere except at Brunbelois. Thus earth will be rid of your scandal-breeding saint, and Hoprig of his halo and Florian of his threatened hysteria. And this Melior and this Hoprig will no longer be real persons, but will once more blend into an ancient legend of exceeding beauty and holiness. And nobody anywhere will be dissatisfied. This I suggest because I like to have happy faces about me, and happy faces everywhere, even in heaven.”
“—And this is the last cloud going west.”
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Michael said: “You are subtle. That is not our strong point, of course. Still, I really do wonder why, after so many conferences, we never thought of such an obvious solution as to antedate him at Brunbelois.”
And Michael looked at Hoprig.
Hoprig smiled, benevolently as always, but not in the least repentantly, and Hoprig said: “Why, after all, I have seen quite as much of this modern world as interests a saint in the prime of life; this halo certainly is, in ways we need not go into, sometimes in inconvenience; and there is no real pleasure in being ministered unto by unwilling angels. So that I am ready to leave it to the lady.”
Now Melior arose from beside the cradle, wherein the child was now once more asleep. And Melior looked at Florian, without saying anything: but she was smiling rather sadly; and Florian knew that nowhere in this world, at any time, had there been any person more lovely than was his disenchanted princess.
And Florian said: “A pest! but, in the name of earth and sky and sea, in the name of Heaven and all the fiends, let this be done! For the moment you are again a legend, madame, I shall recapture the dear misery of my love for you and for that perfect beauty which should be seen and not heard.”