“Nothing. This piggish human brood of ours ought to be destroyed. I feel that I’m an anarchist.”
“Bah! I think you feel drunk,” interrupted he of the side-whiskers.
“Holy God! Just because you happen to be an indecent bourgeois given up to business....”
“You’re more bourgeois than I am.”
The man with the red nose and the yellow beard lapsed into an indignant silence; then, turning to the girl, he said to her in an angry voice:
“Tell that imbecile that when a man of talent speaks he ought to keep his mouth shut. It’s really our fault, for we give him the right of belligerency.”
“Poor man!”
“Idiot!”
“You’re more of a bore than any of the articles you write!” shouted he of the side-whiskers. “And yet, if all this pride you pretend were only truly felt, it would be well. But you don’t feel it. You’re an unfortunate wretch who recognize your own imbecility; you spend your whole life boring us stiff with the recitation of articles you’ve already published,—articles that aren’t even your own, for you steal them right and left....”