Laz. (looking about). Are they not here?
Jav. No; fortunately it occurred to them that you would work better alone.
Laz. Well, whatever you say, I think that I am presentable. Eh? My head doesn’t feel bad—a delicious vagueness. I seem to be encircled by a mist—a very soft mist; and through its texture there shine some little stars. In short, peaceful sensations, very peaceful.
Jav. That’s to say, you are better?
Laz. Don’t I tell you so? My legs indeed give way, but without pain. I walk in the midst of softness. (Laughing.) My head among the clouds and the ground of cotton-wool. Divine! So ought the universe to be—that is, quilted. Lord! what a world has been made of it—so rough, so hard, so inconvenient. At every step you stumble and injure yourself—rocks, rugged stones, sharp points, peaks, angles, and little corners and big corners. The world should be round—quite so, and round it is; roundness is perfection; but it should be an immeasurable sphere of eider-down, so that, if a citizen falls, he may always fall amid softness—thus! (Letting himself fall in the arm-chair, or on one of the cushioned stools at the side of the table.)
Jav. All very well—but you really are not strong.
Laz. I am not strong? Stronger than you—stronger than you. Stronger.
Jav. I told you that you should not drink. It does you harm; your health is broken down.
Laz. I’m broken down? I?—How? I have not been a saint, but neither have I been a madman. I am young: I have always thought that I was strong: and, through drinking two or three glasses, and smoking a puro and laughing a little—here am I transformed into a stupid being! Because, now, it is not that I am broken down, as you say, nor that I am drunk, as you suppose—it is that I feel simply stupid. No; and see, now, it is not so disagreeable to be stupid: one feels—a sort of merriment, as it were. That’s why so many people are merry. (Laughing.) That’s why! That’s why! Now I am falling into this same stupidity—that’s why, just so.
Jav. Attend to me, and understand what I say to you, if you are in a condition to understand me.