“Indeed,” she replied, “I daresay that is the truth. So, for all our sakes, Hoprig and I will go back to the time before I married you: and then, on account of the baby, I suppose I will have to marry Hoprig, who at least takes women as he finds them.”
“You speak, I assume, metaphorically,” observed the saint, “but, in any case, I believe you exhibit good sense. So let us be going.”
Then Florian said farewell to Melior and to Hoprig also. Florian had put aside his dapper look: he had quite lost his usual air of tolerating a mixture of vexation and mirth: and for that moment he did not show in anything as a jaunty little person of the very highest fashion.
“Now that you two,” said Florian, “become again a legend and a symbol, I can believe in and love and worship you once more. It is in vain, it is with pitiable folly, that any man aspires to be bringing beauty and holiness into his daily living. These things are excellent for dilettanti to admire from afar. But they are not attainable, in any quantity that suffices. We needs believe in beauty: and there needs always flourish the notion that beauty exists in human living, so long as memory transfigures what is past, and optimism what is to come. And sometimes one finds beauty even in the hour which is passing, here and there, at wide intervals: but it is mixed—as inextricably as is mixed your speaking, bright-colored enemy of all romance,—with what is silly and commonplace and trivial.”
“It seems so very vexatious,” Melior stated, as if from depths of long deliberation, “when you can distinctly remember having brought your hat, to be quite unable—Yes, go on talking, Florian. It is on the peg by the door, and we are all listening.”
“And I would like to believe,” continued Florian, “that there is holiness in human living; but I at least have always found this also mixed with, I do not say hypocrisy, but ambiguity.... Mankind have their good points, but—to my knowledge,—no firm claim of any sort on admiration. I have been familiar with no person without finding that intimacy made some liking inevitable and any real respect preposterous. I deduce that in no virtue, and in no viciousness, does man excel: his endowments, either way, are inadequate. So holiness and beauty must remain to me just notions very pleasant to think about, and quite harmless to aim at if you like, if only because such aiming makes no noticeable difference anywhere. But they remain also unattained by mortal living. I do not know why this should be the law. I merely know that I overrode the law which says that only mediocrity may thrive in any place; and that I have been punished, with derision and with too clear seeing.”
“Yes, but,” said Janicot, “you are punishing everybody else with verbosity—”
“I also can perceive no reason, my son,” declared St. Hoprig, “for talking highflown bombast and attempting to drag an apologue from the snarls of a most annoying affair. It should be sufficient to reflect that your romantic hankerings have upset heaven, and have given rise—I gather from the sneers of this brown fiend,—to unfavorable comment even in hell. And there is simply no telling into what state my temple of Llaw Gyffes may have got during the months you have held me in this frivolous modern world.”
“Your temple of Llaw Gyffes!” said Florian, sadly. “But can it be, monsieur, that, after having been a saint of the Calendar, now that you return to heathen Brunbelois and the old time—?”
“My son, in any time,” Hoprig replied, “and in any place, my talents are such as qualify me only for the best-thought-of church. My nature craves stability and the support of tradition and of really nice people. New faiths sometimes allure unthinking hot-heads like that poor dear Horrig, but not ever me: for I find that any religion, when once it is endowed and made respectable, works out in its effect upon human living pretty much like any other religion. Meanwhile, of course, one naturally prefers to retain a solid position in society. So that really it does seem foolish to quarrel, in any time or place, with the best-thought-of faith. No, Florian, creeds shift and alter in everything except in promising salvation through church-work: but the prelate remains immortal. And I will tell you another thing, Florian, that you should remember when we are gone: and it is that all men and all women are human beings, and that nothing can be done about it.” And Hoprig at this point regarded Florian for some while with a sort of pity. “In any case,” the saint said then, “do you look out for another celestial patron, and for a second father in the spirit, now that sunset approaches, and this is the last cloud going west.”