“Eh! friend! if one wants to talk with you, one must hang a cloth tongue in one’s mouth; one’s own would soon get wagged off.... Your head’s so empty, that one can hear the wind whistle through it, even on a close night like this!... The trouble was in his inside.”
“Do you mean the trouble about his wife was in his inside?”
“There! shut up with your foolery!” exclaimed the other, irritably; “I never heard a fellow rattle off such stuff!...”
“All that is because you haven’t got any gift of reflection.”
“Reflection be hanged!”
“Supposing a soldier’s foot is cut off, that means it was his foot that was bad, not his back or his inside. Supposing my hand is cut off, it must have been my hand that was bad, and not my ear or my nose.... Very well, then; if a man goes and breaks his back under a railway train from grief, I should like to know where was his grief—in his back, or in his inside?”
Silence.
“Now, you see, that’s just the whole point.... The trouble was in his conscience, in his soul—not in his bones or his ribs.... That’s why you should say: ‘He’s lost his soul,’ instead of saying ‘Twaddle,’ as that grand gentleman said.... It was his soul that was ill; and it was his soul that went to pieces under the train....”
“It’s the devil’s work, and nothing else,” obstinately growled the unseen bass in the group of silhouettes.
“The devil’s work? Of course it’s the devil’s work! Only, the devil doesn’t pull you under the train by your leg, but by your conscience, by your soul. That’s just the whole thing. No, no, mates! There is a soul, there is indeed!...”