Ber. Come, have done with this! Who prevents your continuing the issue? Surely Arganti’s writings have not lost their value through his death?
Ser. What interest can attach to his expedition to Palestine, undertaken twenty years ago, now that people can make a holiday excursion of it and travel by rail? It needs something else to tickle the palate of the public, who, nowadays, are perfectly familiar with Afghanistan, Zululand, Basutoland,—not to mention journeys to the centre of the earth, to the bottom of the sea, and the sphere of the moon! My poor sixty thousand francs!... If he had lived it would not have been so bad. With a Mutual Admiration Society such as the fashionable papers know how to get up, something might have been done. But now that Arganti is dead, who is going to waste his time in praising him? You will have your time fully taken up in bringing out some new genius—one of those startling and powerful ones who open new horizons to the heart and mind, to science, and their country every quarter of an hour! And I shall be sacrificed!
Ber. You are both ungrateful and mistaken. You have made quite a nice little sum out of our poor friend’s works, which we advertised for you at reduced prices and reviewed in special articles!
Ser. Why, I have spent the whole on advertising the new edition; and now, just as I am about to reap the fruits of judicious puffing, everything is upset by death—the one thing I had not calculated on.
Ber. Serpilli! Serpilli!
Ser. It is enough to bring on an attack of the jaundice! If Arganti had at least confined himself to writing a couple of volumes!... No, sir! Twenty-seven!
Ber. Would you, out of sordid self-interest, wish the scientific and literary heritage of the nation to be diminished?
Ser. You are laughing at me. You are quite right; I have been an idiot.
Ber. I respect every one’s convictions.