IV. PEACH-BLOSSOM AND WINE

[73] Those searchings of mind brought from time to time cruel starts
from sleep, a sudden shudder at any wide outlook over life and its
issues, draughts of mental east-wind across the hot mornings, into
which the voices of his companions called him, to lose again in long
rambles every thought save that of his own firm, abounding youth.
These rambles were but the last, sweet, wastefully-spent remnants of
a happy season. The letter for Monsieur Michel de Montaigne was to
hand, with preparations for the distant journey which must presently
break up their comradeship. Nevertheless, its actual termination
overtook them at the last as if by surprise: on a sudden that
careless interval of time was over.

The carelessness of "the three" at all events had been entire.
Secure, on the low, warm, level surface of things, they talked, they,
rode, they ate and drank, with no misgivings, mental or moral, no too
curious questions as to the essential nature of their so palpable
well-being, [74] or the rival standards thereof, of origins and
issues. And yet, with all their gaiety, as its last triumphant note
in truth, they were ready to trifle with death, welcoming, by way of
a foil to the easy character of their days, a certain luxurious sense
of danger--the night-alarm, the arquebuse peeping from some quiet
farm-building across their way, the rumoured presence in their
neighbourhood of this or that great military leader--delightful
premonitions of the adventurous life soon to be their own in Paris.
What surmises they had of any vaguer sort of danger, took effect, in
that age of wizardry, as a quaintly practical superstition, the
expectation of cadaverous "churchyard things" and the like, intruding
themselves where they should not be, to be dissipated in turn by