The third idler remarked:
“I would pay a great deal for anything that would help me to pass just two pleasant hours every day.”
The writer, who had just thrown his overcoat across his arm, turned round to them, and said:
“The man who could discover a new vice and introduce it among his fellow creatures, even if it were to shorten their lives, would render a greater service to humanity than the man who found the means of securing to them eternal salvation and eternal youth.”
The doctor burst out laughing, and, while he chewed his cigar, he said:
“Yes, but it is not so easy to discover it. Men have however crudely, been seeking for—and working for the object you refer to since the beginning of the world. The men who came first reached perfection at once in this way. We are hardly equal to them.”
One of the three idlers murmured:
“What a pity!”
Then, after a minute's pause, he added:
“If we could only sleep, sleep well, without feeling hot or cold, sleep with that perfect unconsciousness we experience on nights when we are thoroughly fatigued, sleep without dreams.”