When they reached the stables Seguin greatly admired the big draught horses, and praised them with the expressions of a connoisseur.  Then he returned to the subject of breeding, and cited some extraordinary results that one of his friends obtained by certain crosses.  So far as the animal kingdom was concerned his ideas were sound enough, but when he came to the consideration of human kind he was as erratic as ever.  As they walked back from the stables he began to descant on the population question, denouncing the century, and repeating all his old theories.  Perhaps it was jealous rancor that impelled him to protest against the victory of life which the whole farm around him proclaimed so loudly.  Depopulation! why, it did not extend fast enough.  Paris, which wished to die, so people said, was really taking its time about it.  All the same, he noticed some good symptoms, for bankruptcy was increasing on all sides—­in science, politics, literature, and even art.  Liberty was already dead.  Democracy, by exasperating ambitious instincts and setting classes in conflict for power, was rapidly leading to a social collapse.  Only the poor still had large families; the elite, the people of wealth and intelligence, had fewer and fewer children, so that, before final annihilation came, there might still be a last period of acceptable civilization, in which there would remain only a few men and women of supreme refinement, content with perfumes for sustenance and mere breath for enjoyment.  He, however, was disgusted, for he now felt certain that he would not see that period since it was so slow in coming.

“If only Christianity would return to the primitive faith,” he continued, “and condemn woman as an impure, diabolical, and harmful creature, we might go and lead holy lives in the desert, and in that way bring the world to an end much sooner.  But the political Catholicism of nowadays, anxious to keep alive itself, allows and regulates marriage, with the view of maintaining things as they are.  Oh! you will say, of course, that I myself married and that I have children, which is true; but I am pleased to think that they will redeem my fault.  Gaston says that a soldier’s only wife ought to be his sword, and so he intends to remain single; and as Lucie, on her side, has taken the veil at the Ursulines, I feel quite at ease.  My race is, so to say, already extinct, and that delights me.”

Mathieu listened with a smile.  He was acquainted with that more or less literary form of pessimism.  In former days all such views, as, for instance, the struggle of civilization against the birth-rate, and the relative childlessness of the most intelligent and able members of the community, had disturbed him.  But since he had fought the cause of love he had found another faith.  Thus he contented himself with saying rather maliciously:  “But you forget your daughter Andree and her little boy Leonce.”

“Oh!  Andree!” replied Seguin, waving his hand as if she did not belong to him.