He sat there, feeding the small blaze with twigs and yet more twigs: and through his thinking flitted thoughts not wholly seized. But this fire was to him a poem. So went youth, and by and by, life. Brief heat and bluster and brilliancy, a little noise, then smoke and ashes: then youth was gone, with all its sparkle and splutter. You were thirty-six: you still got love-letters from abbesses of the blood royal, but your heart was a skuttle of cold cinders. And all that which had been, in these gardens and in so many other places, did not matter to you. It probably did not matter to anybody, and never had mattered. Yes, like this tiny blazing here, so went youth, and by and by, life. …
“Why, what the devil, my friend—!”
Someone was speaking very close at hand. Florian looked up, strangely haggard, looked into the face of his son Gaston. The young Prince de Lisuarte was not alone, for a little behind him stood a dark-haired staring peasant girl. She was rather pretty, in a fresh and wholesome way that acquitted her of rational intelligence; and her bodice, Florian noted, had been torn open at the neck. Well, after all, Gaston was sixteen.
“My father!” the boy said now. But Florian observed with approval that the embarrassment was momentary. “This is in truth a delightful surprise, monsieur,” Gaston continued. “We saw the smoke, and could not imagine what caused it here in the park—”
“So that,” said Florian, “you very naturally investigated—”
He was reflecting that, after all, he was not answerable, and owed no explanation, to his son for making a small fire in the spring woods. That was lucky, for the boy would not understand the poetry of it. Florian saw too with approval that the young woman had disappeared. For her to have remained would have been wholly tactless, since it would have committed him to some expression of elevated disapproval. As it was, he needed only to rise and shake hands with this tall son of his, and then sit down again.
Gaston was rather picturesquely ugly: he indeed most inconsiderately aspersed his grandmother’s memory by this injudicious resemblance to the late King of England whom rumor had credited with the begetting of Gaston’s mother. Carola, though, had been quite pretty. Florian thought for a while of his first wife with less dislike than he had entertained toward her for years. Still, he perceived, he did not actually like this tall boy who waited before him, all in black. That would be for Raoul. …
“My son,” said Florian, slowly, “I am on my way homeward to dispose of an awkward business in which there is an appreciable likelihood of my getting my death. So the whim took me to see you, it may be, for the last time.”
“But, monsieur, if there is danger you should remember that I count as a man now that I am seventeen next month. I have already two duels to my credit, I must tell you, in which I killed nobody, to be sure, but gave very handsome wounds. So may I not aid in this adventure ?”
“Would you fight then in my defence, Gaston?”
“Assuredly, monsieur.”
“But why the devil should you? Let us be logical, Gaston! You loved that handsome hulking uncle of yours, not me, as people are customarily supposed to love their fathers: and I have recently killed him. Your damned aunt, I know, has been telling you that I ill-treated and murdered your mother also. To cap all, you have a great deal to gain by my death, for you are my heir. And I am too modest to believe that my engaging qualities have ever ensnared you into any personal affection.”
The boy reflected. “No, there has been no love between us. And they say you are wicked. But I would fight for you. I do not know why.”
Florian smiled. He nodded his head, in a sort of unwilling approval. “We come of a queer race, my son. That is the reason you would fight in my cause. It is also a reason why we may speak candidly.”
“Is candor, monsieur, quite possible between father and son?”
Florian liked that too, and showed as much. He said: “All eccentricities are possible to our race. There are many quaint chronicles to attest this, for there has always been a Puysange somewhere or another fluttering the world. To-day I am Puysange. To-morrow you will be Puysange. So I sit here with my little blaze of spluttering twigs already half gray ashes. And you stand there, awaiting my leisure, I will not ask how patiently.”
“I regard you, monsieur, with every appropriate filial sentiment. But you can remember, I am afraid, just what that comes to.”
“I remember most clearly. In these matters we are logical. So it is the defect of our race not ever to love anybody quite whole-heartedly; and certainly we are not so ill-advised as to squander adoration upon one another. Rather, we must restively seek everywhither for our desire, even though we never discover precisely what is this desire. That also, Gaston, is logic: for we of Puysange know, incommunicably but very surely, that this unapprehended desire ought to be gratified. It is this lean knowledge which permits us no rest, no complacent living in the usual drowsiness. … ”
“They tell me, monsieur, that we derive this trait from that old Jurgen who was our ancestor, and from tall Manuel too, whose life endures in us of Puysange.”
“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 alclass="underline" 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.”