My friend smiled in his dubious way, and answered:
“Do you know the ‘blue rock’?”
“No.”
“Ah! there you have a pigeon who has less complacency than any living thing. You see, it depends on circumstances. Suppose, for instance, that we happened to keep Our Selves—perhaps the most complacent class of human beings—in a large space enclosed by iron railings, feeding them up carefully, until their natural instincts caused them to run up and down at a considerable speed from side to side of the enclosure. And suppose when we noticed that they had attained the full speed and strength of their legs we took them out, holding them gingerly in order that they might not become exhausted by struggling, and placed them in little tin compartments so dark and stuffy that they would not care of their own accord to stay there, and then stood back about thirty paces with a shot gun and pressed a spring which let the tin compartment collapse. And then, as each one of Our Selves ran out, we let fly with the right barrel and peppered him in the tail, whereon, if he fell, we sent a dog out to fetch him in by the slack of his breeches, and after holding him idly for a minute by the neck we gave it a wring round; or, if he did not fall, we prayed Heaven at once and let fly with the left barrel. Do you think in these circumstances Our Selves would be complacent?”
“Don’t be absurd!” I said.
“Very well,” he replied, “I will come to ‘blue rocks’—do you still maintain that they are so complacent as to deserve their fate?”
“I don’t know—I know nothing about their fate.”
“What the eyes do not swallow, the heart does not throw up! There are other places, but—have you been to Monte Carlo?”
“No, and I should never think of going there.”
“Oh, well,” he answered, “it’s a great place; but there’s just one little thing about it, and that’s in the matter of those ‘blue rocks.’ You’ll agree, I suppose, that one can’t complain of people amusing themselves in any way they like so long as they hurt no one but themselves——”