"You speak," said the Russian, "as if I should dissemble. But this passion, at once ideal and physical, I truly feel and if I say that I suffer I shall not be lying."
"All the better, for sincerity is a mighty wonder-worker, but you would be able to say nothing and, through modesty, you would conceal your sufferings. I merely offer you the means of not suffering, of not loving in vain. Ah! the futile loves, the deceitful tortures of vain desire: tears--good grain sown on the sands!"
"Yes," Moscowitch answered, "all who weep are not consoled. I thank you and understand you. You, too, have the religion of human suffering."
"I!" Hubert wanted to cry, jestingly. But why wound this humanitarian mystic? He simply answered:
"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?"