"No, Bateese; not yet." "But you will; with that face it is certain. Now shall I tell you?-- to my guessing this love of women is like an untried rapid. Something smiles ahead for you, and you push for it and _voyez!_ in a moment down you go, fifteen miles an hour and the world spinning; and at the bottom of the fall, if the woman be good, sweet is the journey and you wonder, looking back from smooth water, down what shelves you were swept to her. That, I say, is what I suppose this love to be; but for myself I shall never try it. Since le bon Dieu broke the pitcher its pieces are scattered all over me, within; they hold nothing, but there they lie shining in their useless fashion." "Not useless, perhaps, Bateese." "In their useless fashion," he persisted. "They will smile and be gay at the sight of a pretty girl, or at the wild creatures in the woods yonder, or at the thoughts in a song, or for no better reason than that the day is bright and the air warm. But they can store nothing. It is the same with religion, monsieur, and with affairs of State; neither troubles my head. Dominique is devout, for example; and Father Launoy comes to talk with him, which makes him gloomy. The reverend Father just hears my sins and lets me go; he knows well enough that Bateese does not count. And then he and Dominique sit and talk politics by the hour. The Father declares that all the English are devils, and that anyone who fights for the Holy Church and is killed by them will rise again the third day." John laughed aloud this time. "I too think the reverend Father must be making some mistake," said Bateese gravely. "No doubt he has been misinformed." "No doubt. For suppose now that I were a devil?" "Oh, m'sieur," Bateese expostulated. "_Ca serait bien dommage!_ But I hope, in any case, God would pardon me for talking with you, seeing that to contain anything, even hatred, is beyond me." "Shall I tell you what I think, Bateese? I think we are all pitchers and perhaps made to be broken. Ten days ago I was brimful of ambitions; someone--le bon Dieu, or General Abercromby--has toppled me over and spilt them all; and here I lie on my side, not broken, but full of emptiness." "Heh, heh--'full of emptiness'!" chuckled Bateese, to whom the phrase was new. "It may be that in time someone will set me up again and pour into me wine of another sort. I hope for this, because it is painful to lie upset and empty; and I do not wish to be broken, for that must be even more painful--at the time, eh?" Bateese glanced up, with a twitch of remembered pain. "Indeed, m'sieur, it hurt--at the time." "But afterwards--when the pieces have no more trouble, being released from pride--the pride of being a pitcher! Is it useless they are as they lie upturned, reflecting--what? My friend, if we only knew this we might discover that now, when it can no longer store up wine for itself, the pitcher is at last serving an end it was made for."