gives them problems that take all their strength and brain power to solve, that keeps them fit and pink and tiptoe with ambition and zip, and prevents them from lying down and giving up when they see a hard proposition coming their way, such as changing a small factory into a big one and keeping the product up to standard. Business, modern business keeps a man _alive_ so that when he sees a problem like that he doesn't give a groan and go and prune his roses, he just tears right in and _does_ it!" Monsieur Réquine listened to the translation of this impassioned _credo_ with the expression of judicial consideration which was evidently the habitual one upon his face. At the end he stroked his beard meditatively and looked into space for a time before answering. When he spoke, it was with a mildness and quiet which made him indeed seem much the older of the two, a certain patient good humor which would have been impossible to the other man. "Mr. Hale, you say that my conception of life looks like laziness to you. Do you know how yours looks to me? Like a circle of frenzied worshipers around a fiery Moloch, into whose maw they cast everything that makes life sweet and livable, leisure, love, affection, appreciation of things rare and fine. My friend, humanity as a whole will never be worth more than the lives of its individuals are worth, and it takes many, many things to make individual lives worth while. It takes a mixture, and it needs, among other elements, some quiet, some peace, some leisure, some occupation with things of pure beauty like my roses, some fellowship with great minds of the past...." His eyes took on a dreamy deepening glow. "Sometimes as I dig the earth among my fruit-trees, the old, old earth, a sentence from Epictetus, or from Montaigne comes into my head, all at once luminous as I never saw it before. I have a vision of things very wide, very free, very fine. Almost, for a moment, Mr. Hale, almost for a moment I feel that I understand life." The American stood up to go with a gesture of finality. He put his hat firmly on his head and said in pitying valedictory: "Monsieur Réquine, you're on the wrong track. Take it from me that nobody can understand life. The best thing to do with life is to live it!" The Frenchman, still seated, still philosophic, made a humorous gesture. "Ah, there are as many different opinions as there are men about what that means, to 'live life'!" * * * * * In the cab going back to Paris the American said little. Once he remarked almost to himself, "The thing I can't get over is that his damned cream _is_ better than anything we make." The French official emerged from a thoughtful silence of his own to comment: "Mr. Hale, the generosity of that remark is only equaled by its perspicacity! It makes me more than ever concerned for the future of French commerce." * * * * *