" Laura burst forth, "by force of wishing
to see things clear, see them more vaguely than other people. I can see
all this quite simply; it appears to me that we call every person moral
who behaves well, and on the contrary, one that does wicked deeds is
called immoral and is punished."

"But you prejudge the question," exclaimed Caesar; "you take it as
settled beforehand. You say, good and evil exist...."

"And don't they exist?"

"I don't know."

"So that if they gave you the task of judging mankind, you would see no
difference between Don Juan Tenorio and Saint Francis of Assisi?"

"Perhaps it was the saint who had the more pleasure, who was the more
vicious."

"How atrocious!"

"No, because the pleasure one has is the criterion, not the manner of
getting it. As for me, what is called a life of pleasure bores me."

"And judging from the little I know of it, it does me too," said I.

"I see life in general," he continued, "as something dark, gloomy, and
unattractive."

"Then you gentlemen do not place the devil in this life, since this life
seems unattractive to you. Where do you find him?"

"Nowhere, I think," replied Caesar; "the devil is a stupid invention."

AT TWILIGHT

The twilight was beginning.

"It is chilly here by the river," I said. "Let us go to the house."

We went up by a sloping path between pear-trees, and reached the
vestibule of the house. From afar we heard the sound of the stage-coach
bells; a headlight gleamed, and we saw it pass by and afterwards
disappear among the trees. "What a mistake to ask more of life than it
can give!" suddenly exclaimed Laura. "The sky, the sun, conversation,
love, the fields, works of art... think of looking on all these as a
bore, from which one desires to escape through some violent occupation,
so as to have the satisfaction of not noticing that one is alive."

"Because noticing that one is alive is disagreeable," replied her
brother.

"And why?"

"The idea! Why? Because life is not an idyll, not by a good deal. We
live by killing, destroying everything there is around us; we get to
be something by ridding ourselves of our enemies. We are in a constant
struggle."

"I don't see this struggle. Formerly, when men were savages, perhaps....
But now!"

"Now, just the same. The one difference is that the material struggle,
with the muscles, has been changed to an intellectual one, a social one.
Nowadays, it is evident, a man does not have to h