Chapter IX

At last,' said the Professor, as they began dinner that evening, 'the fulness of time has come. All the evils of Humanity are removed, and progress has come to an end because it can go no further. We have nothing now to do but to be unspeakably and significantly happy.'

The champagne flowed freely. Our friends ate and drank of the best, their spirits rose, and Virginia admitted that this was really 'jolly.' The sense of the word pleased the Professor, but its sound seemed below the gravity of the occasion; so he begged her to say 'sublime' instead. 'We can make it mean,' he said, 'just the same, but we prefer it for the sake of its associations.'

It soon, however, occurred to him that eating and drinking were hardly delights sufficient to justify the highest state of human emotion, and he began to fear he had been feeling sublime prematurely; but in another moment he recollected he was an altruist, and that the secret of their happiness was not that any one of them was happy, but that they each knew the others were.

'Yes, my dear curate,' said the Professor, 'what I am enjoying is the champagne that you drink, and what you are enjoying is the champagne that I drink. This is altruism; this is benevolence; this is the sublime outcome of enlightened modern thought. The pleasures of the table, in themselves, are low and beastly ones; but if we each of us are only glad because the others are enjoying them, they become holy and glorious beyond description.'

'They do,' cried the curate rapturously, 'indeed they do. I will drink another bottle for your sake. It is sublime!' he said, as he tossed off three glasses. 'It is significant!' he said as he finished three more. 'Tell me, my dear, do I look significant?' he added, as he turned to Virginia, and suddenly tried, to crown the general bliss by kissing her.

Virginia started back, looking fire and fury at him. The Professor was completely astounded by an occurrence so unnatural, and exclaimed in a voice of thunder, 'Morality, sir--remember morality! How dare you upset that which Professor Huxley tells us must be for ever strong enough to hold its own?'

But the last glass of champagne had put the curate beyond the reach of exact thought. He tumbled under the table, and the Professor carried him off to bed.