He could never hope to walk
perpetually upon the vestal heights. If Valentine did really come down
towards the valley, what then? Just at first the idea had shocked him.
Now he began almost to wish that it might be so, to feel that he was
shaking hands with Valentine more brotherly than ever before.
"Extremes are wrong, desolate, abominable, I begin to think," Valentine
went on. "Angel and devil, both should be scourged--the one to be purged
of excessive good, the other of excessive evil, and between them, midway,
is man, natural man. Julian, you are natural man, and you are more right
than I, who, it seems, have been educating you by presenting to you for
contemplation my own disease."
"Well, but is natural man worth much? That is the question! I don't
know."
"He fights, and drinks, and loves, and, oftener than the renowned
philosopher thinks, he knows how to die. And then he lives thoroughly,
and that is probably what we were sent into the world to do."
"Can't we live thoroughly without, say, the fighting and the drinking,
Val?"
Valentine got up, too, as if excited, and stood by the fire by Julian's
side.
"Battle calls forth heroism," he said, "which else would sleep."
"And drinking?"
"Leads to good fellowship.
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