“I do not know. I talked lately with a Monsieur Horvendile, who had extreme notions about an Author who compiles an endless Biography, of the life that uses us as masks and temporary garments. But I do not know. I only know that this life was given me by my father, without any knowledge as to what use I should preferably make of the unsought gift. I only know that I have handed on this life to you, on the same terms. Do with the life I gave you whatever you may elect. Now that I see you for the last time, my premonitions tell me, I proffer no advice. I shall not even asperse the effects of vice and evil-doing by protesting that I in person illustrate them. No, I am conscious of a little compassion for you, but that is all: I do not really care what becomes of you. So I proffer no advice.” “Therein, monsieur, at least, you do not deal with me as is the custom of fathers.” “No,” Florian replied. “No, I find you at sixteen already fighting duels and tumbling wenches in the spring woods: and I spare you every appropriate paternal comment. For one thing, I myself had at your age indulged in these amusements; in fact, at your age, with my wild oats sown, I was preparing to settle down to quiet domesticity with your mother: and for another thing, I cannot see that your escapades matter. It is only too clear to me as I sit here, with my little blaze of spluttering twigs already half gray ashes, that in a while you and your ardors and your adversaries and your plump wenches will be picked bones and dust about which nobody will be worrying. These woods will then be as young as ever: and nobody anywhere will be thinking about you nor your iniquities nor your good actions, or about mine either; but in this place every April will still be anemones.” “Meanwhile I have my day, monsieur—” “Yes,” Florian agreed,—“the bustling, restless and dissatisfying day of a Puysange. That is your right, it is your logical inheritance. Well, there has always been a Puysange, since Jurgen also made the most of day and night,—a Puysange to keep his part of the world atwitter until he had been taught, with bruises and hard knocks, to respect the great law of living. Yes, there has always been a Puysange at that schooling, and each in turn has mastered the lesson: and I cannot see how, in the end, this, either, has mattered.” “But what, monsieur, is this great law of living?”