Clair de Lune - LightNovelsOnl.com
You're reading novel online at LightNovelsOnl.com. Please use the follow button to get notifications about your favorite novels and its latest chapters so you can come back anytime and won't miss anything.
Then I am a web binding men and women while they sleep to unexpected things.
URSUS
Ah, you are a trouble maker?
PHEDRO
No--but I discover what is unusual in the senses of one person and in the circ.u.mstances of another person--Indeed, I have had a splendid training.
URSUS
Where?
PHEDRO
I have been--but I was almost showing you the colour of the water I rose from.
URSUS
Well, I have no curiosity.
PHEDRO
That is exactly why one wishes to talk to you. Curiosity in other people always makes me terribly suspicious. I remember suddenly the reasons that can make _me_ curious. Now I can talk to you, for one feels you might not even listen, so you couldn't possibly care enough to repeat. I was a lackey once.
URSUS
A sordid position.
PHEDRO
[_Becomes slightly frenzied during his speech._]
Yes. A servant is something to absorb the spittle of their irritability. A hand to arrange the pages of their private diary when they get stuck together with filth; and above all a presence between them and the mirror during those grey dawn hours when pa.s.sing it, they are likely to see themselves as they are. Ah, then one must be armed with the eloquence of Cato to rea.s.sure these sow's ears that they are still silk purses. Otherwise the devil has to be bought off in the morning and with three times the effort. One thing they never count on, however.
URSUS
And that?
PHEDRO
The effect on another human being of their absurdity and the pa.s.sion of malice they rouse from a too long concealed contempt.
URSUS [_looking at him curiously_]
Contempt is the armour of snakes.
PHEDRO [_his face undergoing a change_]
Is it truly, my fine gentleman? Well, my mind has been wandering and stumbled on a _cul-de-sac_ as usual. Ah, the hope of being understood--it is almost extinct. However, if I cannot be understood, I shall, nevertheless, be felt.
URSUS
Well, what do you want of me? I am a philosopher and as such am not occupied with any sort of facts.
PHEDRO
I suppose not. You philosophers are blind men in dark rooms looking for the footprints of shadows, are you not?
URSUS [_smiling_]
Not at all. We philosophers have merely learned to practice humour in the presence of what is commonplace. But what is it you do want of me?
PHEDRO
What everybody wants--to talk about Gwymplane.
URSUS
Well?
PHEDRO
Have you had this gold mine with you long?
URSUS
Years and years.
PHEDRO
You bought him, I suppose, from some travelling show?
URSUS
No, he came to me of his own accord, and yet by accident.
PHEDRO
Was he riding the wind? And did it drop him by chance upon your knees?
URSUS
He came by accident. He remains of his own accord.
PHEDRO
Curious.
