"Light as foam. But who can believe it? The bearers move within a few feet of us, and yet it resembles the most ponderous limestone or granite. Then you ask yourself: How is it possible? If their burden were what it seems to be, they would be crushed to earth instead of striding proudly along. Admirable figures! As you say, the spectacle takes one back into mythological times. Would you not call it a procession of Titans, children of the Gods, storing up mountain-blocks for some earth-convulsing battle? Your eyes deceive you. Like Thomas, the doubting apostle, you must touch with your hands. And even then you are not wholly convinced. To me, who knows the capacity of human bone and muscle, these men are a daily miracle. They mock my notions of what is permissible. How hard it is, sometimes, to trust the evidence of one's senses! How reluctantly the mind consents to reality! The industry is decaying," he added, "but I hope it will outlive my time."
"Everything seems to decay up here in sober and gracious fashion. I am delighted, Count, with your Old Town. There is an autumnal flavour about the place. It is a poet's dream. Some philosopher might dwell here—some sage who has grown weary of disentangling life's threads."
Rarely did Mr. Heard use florid and sentimental language like this. The soft light, the reposeful surroundings, the homelike influence of the Villa Mon Repos—all had conspired to put him into an uncommonly idyllic mood of mind. He felt disposed to linger with the kindly stranger who seemed so much more communicative and affable than on the occasion of those theatricals. He lit a cigarette and watched, for a while, the flow of life through that gateway. Its passage was pierced, like the eye of a needle, with a slender shaft of light from the westering sun. Fine particles of dust, suspended overhead, enveloped the homeward moving peasantry in a tender mist of gold.
"Yes," replied the Count. "This citadel is a microcosm of what the world might be, if men were reasonable. Not all men! A great proportion must be good enough to remain what they are. We could not live without those whose business it is to bring the reasonableness of the few into its proper relief. Were it otherwise, there would be no more reasonableness on earth, would there?"
"And that would be a pity," observed Mr. Heard. "I was much interested, Count, in what you said yesterday. You spoke of the Mediterranean becoming once more the center of human activity. There is an attraction in the idea to one who, like myself, has been brought up on the classics and has never forgotten his spiritual debt to antiquity. But I question whether the majority of my countrymen would be moved by such considerations."
The old man replied:
"I think we need not trouble about majorities. No one can expect a majority to be stirred by motives other than ignoble. Your English majority, in particular, is quite unaware of its debt to us: why should it turn eyes in our direction? But as for other Northern men, the enlightened ones—I cannot help thinking that they will come to their senses again one of these days. Oh yes! They will recover their sanity. They will perceive under what artificial and cramping conditions, under what false standards, they have been living; they will realize the advantages of a climate where nature meets you half-way. I know little of England, but the United States are pretty familiar to me; the two climates, I imagine, cannot be very dissimilar. That a man should wear himself to the bone in the acquisition of material gain is not pretty. But what else can he do in lands adapted only for wolves and bears? Without a degree of comfort which would be superfluous hereabouts, he would feel humiliated. He must become strenuous if he wishes to rise superior to his inhospitable surroundings."
"We think a good deal of strenuousness," objected the bishop.
"Have you not noticed that whenever anything, however fantastic, is imposed upon men by physical forces, they straightway make a god of it? That is why you deify strenuousness. You dare not forgo it. The Eskimo doubtless deifies seal-blubber; he could not survive without it. Yet nobody would be an Eskimo if he had a chance of bettering his condition. By all means let us take life seriously. But let us be serious about things that matter."
"Things that matter, Count! Is it not creditable for a man to support his wife and family in the best conditions possible?"