Leonard began to talk. He said, with his eyes shining with contentment, how happy he was to escape from life, to have found a refuge, where a man is, and forever will be, in shelter. Christophe, still sore from his wounds, felt passionately the desire for rest and forgetfulness; but it was mingled with regret. He asked with a sigh:
"And yet, does it cost you nothing to renounce life altogether?"
"Oh!" said Leonard quietly. "What is there to regret? Isn't life sad and ugly?"
"There are lovely things too," said Christophe, looking at the beautiful evening.
"There are some beautiful things, but very few."
"The few that there are are yet many to me."
"Oh, well! it is simply a matter of common sense. On the one hand a little good and much evil; on the other neither good nor evil on earth, and after, infinite happiness—how can one hesitate?"
Christophe was not very pleased with this sort of arithmetic. So economic a life seemed to him very poor. But he tried to persuade himself that it was wisdom.
"So," he asked a little ironically, "there is no risk of your being seduced by an hour's pleasure?"
"How foolish! When you know that it is only an hour, and that after it there is all eternity!"