“When I was younger,” he went on, “I used to like meeting successful people—­it was only rarely that I got the chance—­but I gradually discovered that they were not, on the whole, the interesting people.  Sometimes they were, of course, when they were big animated men, full of vitality and interest.  But many men use themselves up in attaining success, and haven’t anything much to give you except their tired side.  No, I soon found out that freshness was the interesting thing, wherever it was to be found—­and, mind you, it isn’t very common.  Many people have to arrive at success by resolute self-limitation; and that becomes very uninteresting.  Buoyancy, sympathy, quick interests, perceptiveness—­that’s the supreme charm; and the worst of it is that it mostly belongs to the people who haven’t taken too much out of themselves.  When we have got a really well-ordered State, no one will have any reason to work too hard, and then we shall all be the happier.  These gigantic toilers, it’s a sort of morbidity, you know; the real success is to enjoy work, not to drudge yourself dry.  One must overflow—­not pump!”

“But what is an artist to do,” I said, “who is simply haunted by the desire to make something beautiful?”

“He must hold his hand,” said Father Payne; “he must learn to waste his time, and he must love wasting it.  A habit of creative work is an awful thing.”

“Come out for a turn,” he went on; “never mind these rotten books; don’t get into a habit of reading—­it’s like endlessly listening to good talk without ever joining in it—­it makes a corpulent mind!”

We went and walked in the garden; he stopped before some giant hemlocks.  “Just look at those great things,” he said, “built up as geometrically as a cathedral, tier above tier, and yet not quite regular.  There must be something very hard at work inside that, piling it all up, adding cell to cell, carrying out a plan, and enjoying it all.  Yet the beauty of it is that it isn’t perfectly regular.  You see the underlying scheme, yet the separate shoots are not quite mechanical—­they lean away from each other, that joint is a trifle shorter—­there wasn’t quite room at the start in that stem, and the pressure goes on showing right up to the top, I suppose our lives would look very nearly as geometrical to anyone who knew—­really knew; but how little geometrical we feel!  I don’t suppose this hemlock is cursed by the power of thinking it might have done otherwise, or envies the roses.  We mustn’t spend time in envying, or repenting either—­or still less in renouncing life.”

“But if I want to renounce it,” I said, “why shouldn’t I?”

“Yes, there you have me,” said Father Payne; “we know so little about ourselves, that we don’t always know whether we do better to renounce a thing or to seize it.  Make experiments, I say—­don’t make habits.”

“But you are always drilling me into habits,” I said.