Such are my debauches, Felítsa! But the whole world resembles me, no matter if one passes for a sage: every man is a living lie. We travel not by the paths of light, we run after the whims of pleasure. ’Twixt the Indolent and the Choleric,[162] ’twixt vanity and vice, one seldom finds the straight road to virtue.
Suppose we have found it! How are we weak mortals not to blunder, where even Reason stumbles and follows after passions, where learned ignoramuses bedim our heads as the mist bedims the wanderers? Temptation and flattery dwell everywhere, and luxury oppresses all the pashas. Where, then, dwells virtue? Where grows the rose without prickles?
It becomes you alone, O Empress, to create light from darkness, dividing chaos harmoniously in spheres, to firmly unite them by a common bond; you alone can bring forth concord out of discord, and happiness out of violent passions: thus the sailor, crossing the sea, catches the gale in his sails and safely guides his ship.
You alone hurt not, nor injure anyone; though you may connive at stupidity, you tolerate no mean act; you treat peccadillos with condescension. You do not choke people, as the wolf chokes the sheep, but you know their worth: they are subject to the will of kings, but more to righteous God who lives in their laws.
You judge soundly of merits, and mete out honour to the deserving: you deem him not a prophet who merely makes rhymes. And as for that entertainment of the mind,—the honour and glory of good caliphs, the lyric strain to which you condescend,—poetry is pleasing to you, acceptable, soothing, useful,—like a refreshing lemonade in summer.
Rumour tells of you that you are not in the least haughty, that you are pleasant in business and in jest, agreeable in friendship and firm; that you are indifferent to misfortune, and so magnanimous in glory that you refused to be called “Wise.”[163] Again, they justly say that one may always tell you the truth.
This, too, is an unheard-of thing and worthy of you alone: you permit the people boldly to know and think all,[164] openly or in secret; nor do you forbid them to say of you what is true or false; and you are always prone to forgive those crocodiles, the Zoiluses of all your benefactions.
Rivers of joyful tears stream from the depth of my heart. Oh, how happy the people must be there with their fate, where a meek, peaceful angel, clad in porphyry splendour, wields the heaven-sent sceptre! There one may whisper conversations and, without fearing punishment, at dinners not drink the health of kings.
There one may erase Felítsa’s name in the line, or carelessly drop her portrait on the ground. There they do not celebrate preposterous weddings, and steam people in ice baths, and pull the mustaches of dignitaries; princes do not cackle like sitting hens, nor favourites laugh loud at them and smear their faces with soot.
You know, O Felítsa, the rights of men and kings. While you enlighten the manners, you do not turn men into fools. In your moments of rest you write fables for instruction and teach the alphabet to Khlor: “Do no wrong, and you will cause the bitterest satirist to become a hated prevaricator.”