The motor-car started off with a hoot.
“All the same, he’s a very remarkable man,” said Doctor Coupé, who seemed to be still half-asleep. And he repeated: “Yes, all the same——”
“He behaved well,” said M. Briavoine.
I noticed the person with the horizontal beard. His fine growth seemed to point down towards his chest, but he readjusted it by a voluntary movement of the chin, and said:
“Certainly, very well; but I would never hesitate, on occasion, to tell him exactly what I thought.”
“Certainly,” said M. Briavoine, “obedience should never go to the length of surrendering your reasoning powers.”
Everybody looked as if he had been doped with a subtle poison, but was gradually getting back to consciousness.
The sweet-smelling breeze played over the grass. I saw fluttering before my eyes the flighty thistleseed, winged and fleecy. With a neat little movement M. Briavoine caught it as he would a fly, and looked at it absently as he ended his sentence:
“Discipline,” he said, “does not imply, with us, the suppression of our critical spirit.”
And I saw, in fact, that the critical spirit had returned.