"And are you at last reconciled to him?"
"I have discovered that the pedant does not exist. There is a hero and a philosopher in you."
"That is a discovery I did not expect from you, and one that astonishes as much as it flatters me."
"When I tell you that I am changed throughout, and that I no longer recognize myself—"
"And I, in spite of your transformation, recognize you very easily. My dear Stephane has preserved his habit of exaggerating all his impressions. Once I was a man who ought to be smothered; now I am an extraordinary being who passes his life in executing heroic projects. No, my poet, I am neither a scoundrel nor a knight errant, and the best that can be said of me is that I am not a blockhead, that I do not lack heart, and that I run over the roofs with remarkable agility."
"No, I exaggerate nothing," he said. "I speak of things as they are, and the proof that you are an extraordinary man is, that in all you do, you appear perfectly simple and natural."
And as Gilbert shrugged his shoulders and smiled:
"Ah! you need not laugh!" he continued. "Feel my pulse, you will see I have no fever. And have you not noticed how calm I have been for several days?"
I confess that your quietness surprises me; but is it really a calm? I suspect that you have only covered the brazier, and that the fire smoulders under the ashes."
"And you stir up the ashes to draw out the sparks. As you please, but I forewarn you, that you will not succeed, and that I shall remain insensible to all your efforts."