“Do you mean the good God, monsieur my father?”
“Eh,” said the Duke, “I would distinguish, I would avoid anthropomorphology, I would speak here with exactness. I mean that in this world we must live always in subjection to notions which a moment’s thought shows always to be irrational; and that nothing anywhere attests the designer of this world, however high His place or whatever His proper title, to be swayed at all by what we describe as justice and logic.”
“I can see that,” said Florian: “though I have been thinking about another sort of high place—”
But the Duke was still speaking: and now, to Florian’s ear, his father’s tone was somewhat of a piece with this sun-steeped and tranquil and ineffably lazy October afternoon, which seemed to show the world as over-satisfied with the done year’s achievements.
“So life, my son, must always display, to him who rashly elects to think about it, just the incoherency and the inconclusiveness of a child’s dreammaking. No doubt, this is to be explained by our obtuseness: I design, in any event, no impiety, for to be impious is unwise. I merely mean that I assume Someone also to be our neighbor, in His high place, and that I think His notions also should be treated with respect.”
“I see,” said Florian. But all that was youthful in him seemed to stir in dim dissent from unambitious aims.
“I mean, in short, that the wise person will conform—with, it may be, a permissible shrug,—to each and every notion that is affected by those neighbors whose strength is greater than his. I would also suggest that, if only for the sake of his own comfort, the wise person will cultivate a belief that these notions, however incomprehensible, may none the less be intelligent and well-meaning.”
“I see,” the boy said, yet again. He spoke abstractedly, for he was now thinking of brown Janicot and of resplendent Monseigneur St. Michael, in that queer dream. His father appeared in some sort to agree with both of them.
And as the Duke continued, speaking slowly, and with something of the languor of this surrounding autumnal world,—which seemed to strive toward no larger upshots than the ripening of grains and fruits,—it occurred to Florian, for the first time in Florian’s life, that this always smiling father of his was, under so many graces, an uneasy and baffled person.
The Duke said: “To submit is the great lesson. I too was once a dreamer: and in dreams there are lessons. But to submit, without dreaming any more, is the great lesson; to submit, without either understanding or repining, and without demanding of life too much of beauty or of holiness, and without shirking the fact that this universe is under no least bond ever to grant us, upon either side of the grave, our desires. To do that, my son, does not satisfy and probably will not ever satisfy a Puysange. But to do that is wisdom.”