"I think, myself," said Jurgen, "you should be gentler with the boy. And as for your crimes, sir, come, will you not conquer this pride which you nickname conscience, and concede that after any man has been dead a little while it does not matter at all what he did? Why, about Bellegarde no one ever thinks of your throat-cutting and Sabbath-breaking except when very old people gossip over the fire, and your wickedness brightens up the evening for them. To the rest of us you are just a stone in the churchyard which describes you as a paragon of all the virtues. And outside of Bellegarde, sir, your name and deeds mean nothing now to anybody, and no one anywhere remembers you. So really your wickedness is not bothering any person now save these poor toiling devils: and I think that, in consequence, you might consent to put up with such torments as they can conveniently contrive, without complaining so ill-temperedly about it." "Ah, but my conscience, Jurgen! that is the point." "Oh, if you continue to talk about your conscience, sir, you restrict the conversation to matters I do not understand, and so cannot discuss. But I dare say we will find occasion to thresh out this, and all other matters, by and by: and you and I will make the best of this place, for now I will never leave you." Coth began to weep: and he said that his sins in the flesh had been too heinous for this comfort to be permitted him in the unendurable torment which he had fairly earned, and hoped some day to come by. "Do you care about me, one way or the other, then?" says Jurgen, quite astounded. And from the midst of his flame Coth, the son of Smoit, talked of the birth of Jurgen, and of the infant that had been Jurgen, and of the child that had been Jurgen. And a horrible, deep, unreasonable emotion moved in Jurgen as he listened to the man who had begotten him, and whose flesh was Jurgen's flesh, and whose thoughts had not ever been Jurgen's thoughts: and Jurgen did not like it. Then the voice of Coth was bitterly changed, as he talked of the young man that had been Jurgen, of the young man who was idle and rebellious and considerate of nothing save his own light desires; and of the division which had arisen between Jurgen and Jurgen's father Coth spoke likewise: and Jurgen felt better now, but was still grieved to know how much his father had once loved him. "It is lamentably true," says Jurgen, "that I was an idle and rebellious son. So I did not follow your teachings. I went astray, oh, very terribly astray. I even went astray, sir I must tell you, with a nature myth connected with the Moon." "Oh, hideous abomination of the heathen!" "And she considered, sir, that thereafter I was likely to become a solar legend." "I should not wonder," said Coth, and he shook his bald and dome-shaped head despondently. "Ah, my son, it simply shows you what comes of these wild courses."