‘Upon my word!’ cried the fool, ‘I wonder you’re not ashamed. That book’s good for nothing; every one’s seen through it long ago. Didn’t you know it? You’re quite behind the times.’
This friend too was alarmed, and he agreed with the fool.
‘What a wonderful fellow my friend N. N. is!’ said a third friend to the fool. ‘Now there’s a really generous creature!’
‘Upon my word!’ cried the fool. ‘N. N., the notorious scoundrel! He swindled all his relations. Every one knows that. You’re quite behind the times.’
The third friend too was alarmed, and he agreed with the fool and deserted his friend. And whoever and whatever was praised in the fool’s presence, he had the same retort for everything.
Sometimes he would add reproachfully: ‘And do you still believe in authorities?’
‘Spiteful! malignant!’ his friends began to say of the fool. ‘But what a brain!’
‘And what a tongue!’ others would add, ‘Oh, yes, he has talent!’
It ended in the editor of a journal proposing to the fool that he should undertake their reviewing column.
And the fool fell to criticising everything and every one, without in the least changing his manner, or his exclamations.