How? What? Were you not speaking of an extension of a hundred
years? I accept with all my heart, master; but let us understand: I am
not such a fool as to ask for the lengthening of my old age."

"Then what do you want?"

"From old age I only ask the experience which it gives by degrees. 'Si
jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait!' says the proverb. I wish to
preserve for a hundred years the strength of a young man, and to
acquire the knowledge of an old one."

"So be it," said Death; "I shall return this day a hundred years."

"Bon voyage, cher Dumollet,
A Saint-Malo debarquez sans naufrage."

XI

The great golfer began a new life. At first he enjoyed perfect
happiness, which was increased by the certainty of its not ending for
a hundred years. Thanks to his experience, he so well understood the
management of his affairs that he could leave his mallet and shut up
shop.[24]

[24] _Vivre a porte close._

He experienced, nevertheless, an annoyance he had not foreseen. His
wonderful skill at golf ended by frightening the players whom he had
at first delighted, and was the cause of his never finding any one who
would play against him.

He therefore quitted the canton and set out on his travels over French
Flanders, Belgium, and all the greens where the noble game of golf is
held in honour. At the end of twenty years he returned to Coq to be
admired by a new generation of golfers, after which he departed to
return twenty years later.

Alas! in spite of its apparent charm, this existence before long
became a burden to him. Besides that, it bored him to win on every
occasion; he was tired of passing like the Wandering Jew through
generations, and of seeing the sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons of
his friends grow old, and die out. He was constantly reduced to making
new friendships which were undone by the age or death of his fellows;
all changed around him, he only did not change.

He grew impatient of this eternal youthfulness which condemned him to
taste the same pleasures for ever, and he sometimes longed to know the
calmer joys of old age. One day he caught himself at his
looking-glass, examining whether his hair had not begun to grow
white; nothing seemed so beautiful to him now as the snow on the
forehead of the old.

XII

In addition to this, experience soon made him so wise that he was no
longer amused at anything. If sometimes in the tavern he had a fancy
for making use of his a