“It follows that all gods must pass until—perhaps—a god be found who satisfies the requirements of this disastrously exigent human dreaming. It follows that I must perforce go quietly about my kingdom because of this insane toplofty dreaming.” And Janicot sighed. “Yes, it is humiliating: but I also have my anodyne, I have my wonder word. And it is Drink!”
“Of course it would be,” Michael replied, with the most dignified of hiccoughs, “since drunkenness is a particularly low form of sin.”
“The drinking I advocate is not merely of the grape. No, it is from the cup of space that I would have all drink, accepting all that is, in one fearless draught. Some day, it may be, my people here will attain to my doctrine: and even these fretful little men will see that life and death, and the nature of their dreams, and of their bodies also, are but ingredients in a cup from which the wise drink fearlessly.”
Janicot had risen now. He came toward Florian, and stood there, looking down. And Florian discreetly continued his mimicry of untroubled slumber.
“Meanwhile he does not drink, he merely dreams, this little Florian. He dreams of beauty and of holiness fetched back by him to an earth which everywhere fell short of his wishes, fetched down by him intrepidly from that imagined high place where men attain to their insane desires. He dreams of aspiring and joy and color and suffering and unreason, and of those quaint taboos which you and he call sin, as being separate things, not seeing how all blends in one vast cup. Nor does he see, as yet, that this blending is very beautiful when properly regarded, and very holy when approached without human self-conceit. What would you have, good Michael? He and his like remain as yet just fretted children a little rashly hungry for excitement.”
Michael stood now beside Janicot. Michael also was looking at Florian, not unkindlily.
“Yes,” Michael said. “Yes, that is true. He is yet a child.”
Then the two faces which bent over Florian were somehow blended into one face, and Florian knew that these two beings had melted into one person, and that this person was prodding him very gently.
