,' you mean? Nay, that is a cruel
religion, which would excruciate hereafter those who enjoy now. Judge
them not; in their laurel crowns there is full often twisted a serpent.
The hunger of the body is bad indeed, but the hunger of the mind is
worse perhaps; and from that they suffer, because from every fulfilled
desire springs the pain of a fresh satiety."

The truffle-hunter, wise in his peasant-fashion, gazed wistfully up at
the face above him, half comprehending the answer.

"It may be so," he murmured; "but then--they _have_ enjoyed! Ah, Christ!
that is what I envy them. Now we--we die, starved amidst abundance; we
see the years go, and the sun never shines once in them; and all we have
is a hope--a hope that may be cheated at last; for none have come back
from the grave to tell us whether _that_ fools us as well."

* * *

"I incline to think you live twenty centuries too late, or--twenty
centuries too early."

Viva turned on him a swift and eager glance.

"Of course!" she said, with a certain emotion, whose meaning he could
not analyse. "Was there ever yet a man of genius who was not either the
relic of some great dead age, or the precursor of some noble future one,
in which he alone has faith?"

"Chut!" said Tricotrin, rapidly; he could not trust himself to hear her
speak in his own defence. "Fine genius mine! To fiddle to a few
villagers, and dash colour on an alehouse shutter! I have the genius of
indolence, if you like. As to my belonging to a bygone age,--well! I am
not sure that I have not got the soul in me of some barefooted friar of
Moyen Age, who went about where he listed, praying here, laughing there,
painting a missal with a Pagan love-god, and saying a verse of Horace
instead of a chant of the Church. Or, maybe, I am more like some Greek
gossiper, who loitered away his days in the sun, and ate his dates in
the market-place, and listened here and there to a philosopher,
and--just by taking no thought--hit on a truer philosophy than ever
came out of Porch or Garden. Ah, my Lord of Estmere! you have two
hundred servants over there at Villiers, I have been told; do you not
think I am better served here by one little, brown-eyed, brown-cheeked
maiden, who sings her Beranger like a lark, while she brings me her dish
of wild strawberries? There is fame too for you--his--the King of the
Chansons! When a girl washes her linen in the brook--when a herdsman
drives his flock through th