"What happens to men doesn't happen to asses. The proverbial Sardinian donkey, sardu molente, is eternally blindfolded. His business is just to turn the wheel, and if the world were to collapse he'd never find it out. The mill is his fixed idea. Suppose some day a wretched historian wanted to write the donkey's life? he would find it vain to describe how his hero ate and slept, what he studied, whether he was intended for a doctor or a lawyer, whether he lived on land or sea or in the clouds. Such things didn't enter into the life of that excellent beast as they enter into the life of all other creatures."
"Anyhow he could say his donkey wasn't immoral."
"I might ask you, what is morality? but you wouldn't be able to answer. I will inform you that morality, or whatever you like to call it, is the result of circumstances. A donkey is highly moral so long as he has no opportunity to be anything else. The young ladies of this house know you are engaged. I am not, so they unlade their sweet electric discharges on me."
"Engaged? I? Who says so?"
"And to a daisy—a pearl cast this time before an ass.
"I forbid you to utter that name! I forbid you! Do you hear?"
"Don't threaten my eyes with that finger! I snap my fingers at you and at all the engaged chaps in the world."
Furiously Anania fell to packing his papers and books.
"I'm going at once!" he said, "at once. It seems there are prying people here, as well as persons in search of amusement. I leave you to your amusement. I am going away."
"Good-bye, then," said Battista, throwing himself on his bed, "but please remember that if I hadn't taken care of you at first, you'd have been squashed by the trams. You thought they were alive, didn't you?"