HULIN. What do you mean?
THE MAN. I mean, that remains to be seen. Two small make one great.
HULIN. You are an optimist.
THE MAN. It's my character.
HULIN. It doesn't seem to have agreed with you, however.
THE MAN [good-naturedly]. But I am naturally an optimist. Luck and I are not close relatives. As long as I can remember, I never got anything I wanted. [Laughing.] Good Lord, I've had bad luck enough in my life! Everything isn't pleasure; life is a mixture. But I don't care: I'm always hoping, and sometimes I'm wrong. This time, Hulin, something good's come to me. The wind has shifted, and luck is with us.
HULIN [chaffingly]. Luck? You'd better ask it to warm you up a bit first.
THE MAN [looking at his naked feet]. I'd rather wear these shoes than the King's. I'd go this way to Vienna or Berlin, if necessary, to teach those kings a lesson.
HULIN. Haven't you enough to do here?
THE MAN. That won't last forever, When we're through here, and have cleaned up Paris and France, why not go the lot of us, arm-in-arm, soldiers, bourgeois, Tom, Dick, and Harry, and clean up Europe? We aren't selfish: we don't want all the fun for ourselves. You know, every time I learn something new, I want to tell it to others. Ever since these things began to stir in me—Liberty, and all this damned fine stuff—I feel I've just got to tell it to everybody, and spout it everywhere. God, if the others are like me, we'll do great things. I can already see the ground trembling under our feet, and Europe boiling like wine in a vat. People are falling on our necks. It's like little brooks rushing down to meet the river. We're a great river, washing everything clean.