_He._--It must be because there is for the one a sense that I have not got, a fibre that has not been given to me, a slack string that you may play upon as much as you please, but it never vibrates. Or it may be because I have always lived with those who were good musicians but bad men, whence it has come to pass that my ear has grown very fine, and my heart has grown very deaf. And then there is something in race. The blood of my father and the blood of my uncle is the same blood; my blood is the same as that of my father; the paternal molecule was hard and obtuse, and that accursed first molecule has assimilated to itself all the rest. _I._--Do you love your child? _He._--Do I love it, the little savage! I dote on it. _I._--Will you not then seriously set to work to arrest in it the consequences of the accursed paternal molecule? _He._--I shall labour in vain, I fancy. If he is destined to grow into a good man, I shall not hurt him; but if the molecule meant him for a ne'er-do-well like his father, then all the pains that I might have taken to make a decent man of him would only be very hurtful to him, Education incessantly crossing the inclination of the molecule, he would be drawn as it were by two contrary forces, and would walk in zigzags along the path of life, as I see an infinity of other people doing, equally awkward in good and evil. These are what we call _especes_, of all epithets the most to be dreaded, because it marks mediocrity and the very lowest degree of contempt. A great scoundrel is a great scoundrel, but he is not an _espece_. Before the paternal molecule had got the upper hand, and had brought him to the perfect abjection at which I have arrived, it would take endless time, and he would lose his best years. I do not meddle at present; I let him come on. I examine him; he is already greedy, cunning, idle, lying, and a cheat; I'm much afraid that he is a chip of the old block. _I._--And you will make him a musician, so that the likeness may be exact? _He._--A musician! Sometimes I look at him and grind my teeth, saying: If thou wert ever to know a note of music, I believe I would wring thy neck. _I._--And why so, if you please? _He._--Music leads to nothing. _I._--It leads to everything. _He._--Yes, when people are first-rate. But who can promise himself that his child shall be first-rate. The odds are ten thousand to one that he will never be anything but a wretched scraper of catgut. Are you aware that it would perhaps be easier to find a child fit to govern a realm, fit to be a great king, than one fit for a great violin player.