“Would you fight then in my defence, Gaston?”
“Assuredly, monsieur.”
“But why the devil should you? Let us be logical, Gaston! You loved that handsome hulking uncle of yours, not me, as people are customarily supposed to love their fathers: and I have recently killed him. Your damned aunt, I know, has been telling you that I ill-treated and murdered your mother also. To cap all, you have a great deal to gain by my death, for you are my heir. And I am too modest to believe that my engaging qualities have ever ensnared you into any personal affection.”
The boy reflected. “No, there has been no love between us. And they say you are wicked. But I would fight for you. I do not know why.”
Florian smiled. He nodded his head, in a sort of unwilling approval. “We come of a queer race, my son. That is the reason you would fight in my cause. It is also a reason why we may speak candidly.”
“Is candor, monsieur, quite possible between father and son?”
Florian liked that too, and showed as much. He said: “All eccentricities are possible to our race. There are many quaint chronicles to attest this, for there has always been a Puysange somewhere or another fluttering the world. To-day I am Puysange. To-morrow you will be Puysange. So I sit here with my little blaze of spluttering twigs already half gray ashes. And you stand there, awaiting my leisure, I will not ask how patiently.”
“I regard you, monsieur, with every appropriate filial sentiment. But you can remember, I am afraid, just what that comes to.”
“I remember most clearly. In these matters we are logical. So it is the defect of our race not ever to love anybody quite whole-heartedly; and certainly we are not so ill-advised as to squander adoration upon one another. Rather, we must restively seek everywhither for our desire, even though we never discover precisely what is this desire. That also, Gaston, is logic: for we of Puysange know, incommunicably but very surely, that this unapprehended desire ought to be gratified. It is this lean knowledge which permits us no rest, no complacent living in the usual drowsiness....”
“They tell me, monsieur, that we derive this trait from that old Jurgen who was our ancestor, and from tall Manuel too, whose life endures in us of Puysange.”