fellow, Valentine, with nice ideas—would have spent his Saturdays to
Monday with them. Over a pipe and a glass of wine, he and Faust
would have discussed the local politics.

   He would have danced the children on his knee, have told them tales
about the war—taught the eldest boy to shoot. Faust, with a
practical man like Valentine to help him, would probably have
invented a new gun. Valentine would have got it taken up.

   Things might have come of it. Sybil, in course of time, would have
married and settled down—perhaps have taken a little house near to
them. He and Marguerite would have joked—when Mrs. Sybil was not
around—about his early infatuation. The old mother would have
toddled over from Nurnberg—not too often, just for the day.

   The picture grows upon one the more one thinks of it. Why did it
never occur to them? There would have been a bit of a bother with
the Old Man. I can imagine Mephistopheles being upset about it,
thinking himself swindled. Of course, if that was the reason—if
Faust said to himself:

   "I should like to marry the girl, but I won't do it; it would not be
fair to the Old Man; he has been to a lot of trouble working this
thing up; in common gratitude I cannot turn round now and behave like
a decent, sensible man; it would not be playing the game"—if this
was the way Faust looked at the matter there is nothing more to be
said. Indeed, it shows him in rather a fine light—noble, if
quixotic.

   If, on the other hand, he looked at the question from the point of
view of himself and the girl, I think the thing might have been
managed. All one had to do in those days when one wanted to get rid
of the Devil was to show him a sword hilt. Faust and Marguerite
could have slipped into a church one morning, and have kept him out
of the way with a sword hilt till the ceremony was through. They
might have hired a small boy:

   "You see the gentleman in red? Well, he wants us and we don't want
him. That is the only difference between us. Now, you take this
sword, and when you see him coming show him the hilt. Don't hurt

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