It seemed to Florian that was a glorious start in life for a boy of ten, a boy of just the same age as Florian. All the later miracles and prodigies appeared, in comparison with that soul-contenting moment, to be compact of paler splendors. Nobody, though, could hear unenviously of the long voyage to the Red Islands and the realm of Hlif, and to Pohjola, and even to the gold-paved Strembölgings, where every woman contains a serpent so placed as to discourage love-making,—of that pre-eminently delightful voyage made by St. Hoprig and St. Hork in the stone trough, which, after its landing upon the coasts of Poictesme, at mid-winter, during a miraculous shower of apple-blossoms, white oxen drew through the country hillward, with the two saints by turns preaching and converting people all the way to Perdigon. For that, Florian remembered, was the imposing fashion in which Holy Hoprig had come to the court of Melior’s father,—and had wrought miracles there also, to the discomfiture of the abominable Horrig. But more important, now, was the reflection that St. Hoprig had in this manner come to Melior and to the unimaginable beauty which, in the high place, a coverlet of violet stuff just half concealed.... Certainly Monseigneur St. Hoprig must have loved Melior very much, and these two must have been very marvelous when they went about a more heroic and more splendid world than Florian could hope ever to inhabit. It was of their beauty and holiness that the boy thought, with a dumb yearning to be not in all unworthy of these bright, dear beings. That was the longing—to be worthy,—which possessed Florian as he stood waiting for his father to rise from the bench beneath the little tree from the East. There, the Duke also seemed to meditate, about something rather pleasant. “You said just now, monsieur my father,” Florian stated, a trifle worried, “that we of Puysange have not always imitated the good examples of St. Hoprig. Have we been very bad?” Monsieur de Puysange had put on his plumed hat, but he stayed seated. He appeared now, as grown people so often do, amused for no logical or conceivable reason: though, indeed, the Duke seemed to find most living creatures involuntarily amusing. He said: “We have displayed some hereditary foibles. For it is the boast of the house of Puysange that we trace in the direct male line from Poictesme’s old Jurgen. That ancient wanderer, says our legend, somehow strayed into the bed-chamber of Madame Félise de Puysange; and the result of his errancy was the vicomte who flourished under the last Capets.” Young Florian, in accord with the quaint custom of the day, had been reared without misinformation as to how or whence children came into the world. So he said only, if a little proudly, “Yes,—he was another Florian, I remember, like me.”