"It may be so," he murmured; "but then—they have enjoyed! Ah, Christ! that is what I envy them. Now we—we die, starved amidst abundance; we see the years go, and the sun never shines once in them; and all we have is a hope—a hope that may be cheated at last; for none have come back from the grave to tell us whether that fools us as well."
"I incline to think you live twenty centuries too late, or—twenty centuries too early."
Viva turned on him a swift and eager glance.
"Of course!" she said, with a certain emotion, whose meaning he could not analyse. "Was there ever yet a man of genius who was not either the relic of some great dead age, or the precursor of some noble future one, in which he alone has faith?"
"Chut!" said Tricotrin, rapidly; he could not trust himself to hear her speak in his own defence. "Fine genius mine! To fiddle to a few villagers, and dash colour on an alehouse shutter! I have the genius of indolence, if you like. As to my belonging to a bygone age,—well! I am not sure that I have not got the soul in me of some barefooted friar of Moyen Age, who went about where he listed, praying here, laughing there, painting a missal with a Pagan love-god, and saying a verse of Horace instead of a chant of the Church. Or, maybe, I am more like some Greek gossiper, who loitered away his days in the sun, and ate his dates in the market-place, and listened here and there to a philosopher, and—just by taking no thought—hit on a truer philosophy than ever came out of Porch or Garden. Ah, my Lord of Estmere! you have two hundred servants over there at Villiers, I have been told; do you not think I am better served here by one little, brown-eyed, brown-cheeked maiden, who sings her Béranger like a lark, while she brings me her dish of wild strawberries? There is fame too for you—his—the King of the Chansons! When a girl washes her linen in the brook—when a herdsman drives his flock through the lanes—when a boy throws his line in a fishing-stream—when a grisette sits and works at her attic lattice—when a student dreams under the linden leaves—he is on their lips, in their hearts, in their fancies and joys. What a power! What a dominion! Wider than any that emperors boast!"
"And," added Estmere, with a smile, "if you were not Tricotrin you would be Béranger?"
"Aye! Hymns forbad at noonday are ever so sung at night; and oftentimes, what at noon would have been a lark's chant of liberty, grows at night to a vampire's screech for blood!" he murmured. "They are gay at your château up yonder."