Peals of laughter, joyous shrieks, screams of mock terror, floated in to us.  I broke a silence which was growing awkward: 

“How happy they are!  Creatures of air and sunshine!  Life in this Arcadia is an idyl.”

“They are not happy,” said Estenega, contemptuously; “they are gay.  They are light of heart through absence of material cares and endless sources of enjoyment, which in turn have bred a careless order of mind.  But did each pause long enough to look into his own heart, would he not find a stone somewhere in its depths?—­perhaps a skull graven on the stone,—­who knows?”

“Oh, Diego!” I exclaimed, impatiently, “this is a party, not a funeral.”

“Then is no one happy?” asked Chonita, wistfully.

“How can he be, when in each moment of attainment he is pricked by the knowledge that it must soon be over?  The youth is not happy, because the shadow of the future is on him.  The man is not happy, because the knowledge of life’s incompleteness is with him.”

“Then of what use to live at all?”

“No use.  It is no use to die, neither, so we live.  I will grant that there may be ten completely happy moments in life,—­the ten conscious moments preceding certain death—­and oblivion.”

“I will not discuss the beautiful hope of our religion with you, because you do not believe, and I should only get angry.  But what are we to do with this life?  You say nothing is wrong nor right.  What would you have the stumbling and unanchored do with what has been thrust upon him?”

“Man, in his gropings down through the centuries, has concocted, shivered, and patched certain social conditions well enough calculated to develop the best and the worst that is in us, making it easier for us to be bad than good, that good might be the standard.  We feel a deeper satisfaction if we have conquered an evil impulse and done what is accepted as right, because we have groaned and stumbled in the doing,—­that is all.  Temptation is sweet only because the impulse comes from the depths of our being, not because it is difficult to be tempted.  If we overcome, the satisfaction is deep and enduring,—­which only goes to show that man is but a petty egotist, always drawing pictures of himself on a pedestal.  The man who emancipates himself from traditions and yields to his impulses is debarred from happiness by the blunders of the blindfolded generations preceding him, which arranged that to yield was easy and to resist difficult.  Had they reversed the conditions and conclusions, the majority of the human race would have fought each other to death, but the selected remnant would have had a better time of it.