Cynicus. Pick holes, not mend them!
Ardilaun. Who would share your highest exaltations and lift you——
Cynicus. Off your feet, till you bashed your crown against the hard fact of orthodox opinion.
Ardilaun. What is opinion to souls the law of the higher intelligence has made twin?
Cynicus. A thorny briar, with twenty prickles to the rose.
Ardilaun. What were a thousand prickles to one such rose?
Cynicus. I concede, Letitia is too fine a prize to be lost for a scratch—a thousand scratches.
Ardilaun. Well said—now you speak like a man.
Cynicus. She must be grasped and all the little spikes allowed to probe their way through the skin. You can rise at cock-crow and salve your wounds with morning dew—you rival the lark sometimes, don't you?—you——
Ardilaun. Nothing to laugh at. I find my best inspirations at sunrise, when the first glow of day blushes through the trees.