on,
everything goes awry; the universe is a tease. It's like children, those
who want them have none, and those who don't want them have them. Total:
I'm vexed. Besides, Laigle de Meaux, that bald-head, offends my sight.
It humiliates me to think that I am of the same age as that baldy.
However, I criticise, but I do not insult. The universe is what it is.
I speak here without evil intent and to ease my conscience. Receive,
Eternal Father, the assurance of my distinguished consideration. Ah!
by all the saints of Olympus and by all the gods of paradise, I was not
intended to be a Parisian, that is to say, to rebound forever, like a
shuttlecock between two battledores, from the group of the loungers to
the group of the roysterers. I was made to be a Turk, watching oriental
houris all day long, executing those exquisite Egyptian dances, as
sensuous as the dream of a chaste man, or a Beauceron peasant, or a
Venetian gentleman surrounded by gentlewomen, or a petty German prince,
furnishing the half of a foot-soldier to the Germanic confederation, and
occupying his leisure with drying his breeches on his hedge, that is to
say, his frontier. Those are the positions for which I was born! Yes, I
have said a Turk, and I will not retract. I do not understand how people
can habitually take Turks in bad part; Mohammed had his good points;
respect for the inventor of seraglios with houris and paradises with
odalisques! Let us not insult Mohammedanism, the only religion which is
ornamented with a hen-roost! Now, I insist on a drink. The earth is a
great piece of stupidity. And it appears that they are going to fight,
all those imbeciles, and to break each other's profiles and to massacre
each other in the heart of summer, in the month of June, when they might
go off with a creature on their arm, to breathe the immense heaps of
new-mown hay in the meadows! Really, people do commit altogether
too many follies. An old broken lantern which I have just seen at a
bric-a-brac merchant's suggests a reflection to my mind; it is time to
enlighten the human race. Yes, behold me sad again. That's what comes
of swallowing an oyster and a revolution the wrong way! I am growing
melancholy once more. Oh! frightful old world. People strive, turn each
other out, prostitute themselves, kill each other, and get used to it!"

And Grantaire, after this fit of eloquence, had a fit of coughing, which
was well earned.

"A propos of revolution," said Joly, "i