There was a pause again, like a sort of truce between these two minds exchanging flashes of thought. Cimourdain broke the silence.
"And the child? To whom would you give it?"
"First to the father who begets it, then to the mother who bears it, then to the master to teach it, then to the city to make a man of it, then to the country, which is the mother supreme, then to humanity, which is the great ancestor."
"You say nothing of God."
"Each of these steps,—father, mother, master, city, country, humanity,—is a round in the ladder which leads up to God."
Cimourdain was silent. Gauvain went on,—
"When one is at the top of the ladder, one has reached God. God opens the door; there is nothing to do but to go in."
Cimourdain made the gesture of a person who is calling some one back.
"Gauvain, come back to earth. We want to realize possibilities."
"Begin by not making them impossible."
"The possible can always be realized."
"Not always. If Utopia is maltreated it is killed. Nothing is more defenceless than the egg."
"But it is necessary to seize Utopia, place it under the yoke of reality, and frame it, in fact. Abstract ideas must be transformed to concrete ideas; what it loses in beauty it will gain in utility; it will be less but better. Right must enter into law; and when right has become law, it is absolute. This is what I call the possible."
"The possible is more than that."
"Ah! you are dreaming again."
"The possible is a mysterious bird always hovering above man."
"It must be caught."
"Alive."
Gauvain continued,—
"My motto is: Always forward. If God had wished man to go backward, he would have put an eye in the back of his head. Let us always look towards the sunrise, development, birth. Whatever falls encourages whatever is trying to rise. The shattering of the old tree is a call
