"He is no fool. Another would have thrown himself at my imprudence, would instantly have urged me _to let myself be taken!_" For his part, Hubert, seeing that the nuts were decidely meaty and not too tasteless, reflected: "I will amuse myself again with throwing a few stones at the branches." Sixtine forestalled him: "What end are you aiming at? Love is too fleeting for your stability, let us admit. In that case, where does your life lead? Ah! poet, to success?" "I am not a poet. I do not know how to cut my thoughts into little morsels that may be equal or unequal, according to the chance of the chopping knife. My prose gets its rhythm only through my breath. Only the pin thrusts of sensation mark its accents and the royal puerility of rich rhymes passes my understanding...." The _vlouement_ of a crow's wings agitated the air above the trees. Hubert remained silent, listening. Then: "_Vlouement_, that's it, vlouement of wings, with the v v v. Is it the v v v or the f f f? The filement of wings? No, vlouement is better. Once more, crow!" Sixtine, a trifle bewildered, stared at him open-mouthed. "Those damned crow wings--one cannot describe them! Oh! success! Does the apple tree solicit applause for having borne fruit? From this one could construct quasi-evangelical parables. If I am not my own judge, and if I displease myself, what matter though I please others? Who are the others? Is there in the world an existence outside of myself? Possibly there is, but I am not aware of it. The world is myself, it owes me its existence, I have created it with my senses; it is my slave and no one else has any power over it. If we were thoroughly certain of the fact that nothing exists outside of ourselves, how prompt would be the cure of our vanities, how quickly our pleasures would be purged of it! Vanity is the fictive bond which links us to an imaginary exterior world. A little effort breaks it and we are free! Free, but lonely, lonely in the frightful solitude where we are born, where we live and die." "What a sad philosophy, but what a proud one!" "It contains less pride than sadness, and I would give much of its arrogance so as never to feel its bitterness." "Who led you to it?" she queried, interested in these matters which seemed sufficiently new to her mind. "But it is natural. How conceive a life different from what it clearly appears to eyes that can see? Yes! perhaps a certain illusion is possible.... What a pity, doubtless, what a pity for me that I did not meet you earlier--years ago. I would have loved you, and then...." "What would have befallen your destiny, as a result?" "You would have deluded me about life's value, Madame," Hubert continued, with a poetic enthusiasm that bordered on persiflage. "I would have drunk, like an external absinthe, the fluid illusion of your sea-green eyes and would have chained myself to life by the golden chain of your blond hair."