“Is it not? They inherit the ages, one must admit. They are like eggs, full of the concentrated meat of wisdom; and as such it is right to sit upon them. It is a self-protective instinct thus to hurry their development, for so their abnormal precocity distributes itself over an ever-increasing area and weakens in its acuteness.”
“And they have cunning, monsieur.”
“Without doubt—the cunning to evoke and trade upon sympathy with sufferings that they pretend to, but are physically incapable of feeling.”
The girl looked up, her eyes expressive of some strangeness of emotion.
“Are they not able to feel, then, monsieur?”
“Not as we do, Nicette. Their nervous organism has not yet come to tyrannise over the spiritual in them. Turn thy head as before, babouine. The light falls crooked on thy mouth. No; I wish never to be burdened with a child, either my own or another’s.”
A low boom of thunder rolled up the sky. Nicette started and drove her chair back a little distance from the window.
“That is vexatious of you, you pullet. Are you afraid of thunder?”
“Oh yes—dear mother!—when it is close.”
“But that is yet far away.”