Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/251

Rh Randal grinned drily, while the other went on:

'Your chasse au bonheur in an individual, based as it is on cruelty and egotism, ends inevitably in disgust and isolation, in disillusionment, hatred, and despair. As it is with an individual, so is it with a community, a nation, a race, a civilisation. The hero of Le Rouge et le Noir finishes on the guillotine, and, though his tragic fate is, half of it, an indictment of his time, yet the other half is certainly an indictment of himself. But how infinitely preferable is this to the last state of the hero of the Chartreuse de Parme, with his cynical acceptance of the baseness and bestiality that form the foundation of civic slavery!'

They had crossed the open space and taken their places almost unconsciously in a little glade that had an outlook towards the west, Randal lying at half-length, the other seated.

Now there was a pause.

'You know,' said Randal, 'I cannot argue. Your eloquence pleases and convinces me, as eloquence always does. My own never failed of that effect, till I was well past thirty. Then the vanity of conviction struck me like all the other vanities, and I gave up talking to try to prove or disprove anything. Therefore I will answer you in your own non-eloquent style, which I feel to be so much more disconcerting, and remark that in these matters it is mostly an affair of