"I composed it as I lay on the hard board in my cell. I wrote it on the wall among the rest, for the benefit and better understanding of my successors: _This place is but a room in Hell, Damned for the punishment of thieves Who steal their brothers' booty; for 'tis sure The small thief starves on what the big thief leaves._ What d'ye think of it?" "Admirable!" said Serge. Old Lawrie turned to him: "And who may you be? You've a bonny voice." "My son," said Francis, glad to say something, for it had just occurred to him that this old lunatic was the father of his new son-in-law. He was infinitely relieved when Serge said in a whisper: "I'll take him home. It's on my way." They parted company as they came into the Burdley Road. Francis watched Serge and the shambling figure of the old man disappear into the darkness, and then, ruefully enough, walked home. It would be difficult, he thought, to persuade his wife to make light of old Lawrie's foibles. "I shall never be able," he said to himself, "to make her see that Annette has married the son and not the father." Indeed, when he told his wife of that night's adventure--and she kept him at it until half-past four in the morning--it became very clear to him that not Annette's secrecy nor her highhandedness nor her want of faith in her parents was one-half so bitter to her as the fact that Bennett was, with natural inadvertence, his father's son. XXV LAWRIEAN PHILOSOPHY _I now mean to be serious--it is time._ DON JUAN. MEANWHILE Serge and old Lawrie became so interested in each other that they walked far into the night. It was Serge who opened the conversation: "I gather that you will be charged with drunkenness and obscene language." "Aye. When I'm fou I'm mighty full o' poetry. The exact words were 'bloody symbol.' The man probably thought I was referring to his vices. I told him he was a symbol of Society's hypocritical endeavour to suppress the consequences of its own villainy. My drunkenness is one of those consequences. It is the direct outcome of the habit of loneliness. . . . Did I talk to you about that before? . . . No. It would be your father. Have you ever been to prison?" Serge regretted that he had never had that experience. "It was a dirty cell they put me in, but it was shining with the truth, the blackguardly truth of all humanity. Man, I found there what I've been seeking these thirty years. . . . I wonder now if ye'll understand me. I would like to know what ye make of life, or if ye make anything of it at all." "It seems to me simple enough," replied Serge. "A man is born. Two things lie before him, love and death."