"Grief is inevitable, but far from being evil, it is the very honor of humanity and the supreme reason of existence. We suffer in order to be less ugly, and that, in the vulgarity of our animal flesh, there may be an esthetic illusion. Joys are unacceptable and repulsive which have in them no promise of suffering: two lovers, in their sports, make a charming spectacle because they tread on the fragile trap-door of an oubliette, full of stakes and hooks. Intellectual desires, in the same way, are interesting in that they surely lead to the horrors of deception or doubt. Try, then, you who are a poet and a creator of souls, to induce the esthetic thrill in your audience with the picture of a perfect happiness: joy is illogical, and, since the illogical is the essential cause of laughter, joy causes laughter. This might, nevertheless, serve in the fifth act as an unexpected punishment. Could you not show a happy knave just by inflicting upon him the most degrading punishment possible to a man? Happy, while he dreams infinitely of the contempt residing in the word, 'happy'!" "Yet," Moscowitch answered, "we do nothing else but pursue happiness." "Oh!" Entragues rejoined, "that is a pastime. We know quite well that we shall never reach it. "I believe," the Russian said, "that you judge humanity by your own sentiments." "I think so too," Entragues answered, "but the contrary would be the more surprising. With whose brain would you have me think, if not with my own?" They separated, after having arranged a rendezvous. Moscowitch, on the day after the morrow or the following day, would call for Entragues at his home, and together they would go to _la Revue spéculative_. CHAPTER XIX NEW SUGGESTIONS "Le fol n'a Dieu." _Epilogue des Contes d'Eutrappei_. "What a painful evening!" thought Hubert, after returning to his home. "What nonsense I have had to think, what platitudes to hear, what stupid remarks to bray? And in what a language! Just so the practical part of my talk be not useless! I count on brutality blended with much weeping: Sixtine will be irritated or bored, and the Russian will disappear from our life. Yes, our life, I have rights upon this woman, those rights of mutual intelligence. We understand each other; with a little attention and verbal caresses, I can acquire a pleasant antenuptial position near her. She is not one of those who are dominated by a perpetual appetite of the flesh and I believe that her delicacy would regard as shameful the very idea of yielding to force. Ah! in short, I do not know her: the plan I have given Moscowitch is perhaps good. Yes, one can never know, but if he adopts it he will have an air of insincerity and she will perceive it."