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274 beasts; but when it comes to wasting so much good money, that these tyrants had never earned, how can you smile at such wickedness? It is really absurd to see you sitting up with your eyes wide open, as proud as if you yourself had been fool enough to scatter these millions to the wind. Surely the worst idiot of all is he who delights in the follies of others!"

After a discourse of this kind, the other side of me would make answer: "Colas, you talk like a printed book, but, none the less, I would give my right hand for these things which you call nonsense; and I find more life in the shadows of the men who died two thousand years ago, than in those who move and breathe today. I feel that I know and love them, and would consent to let Alexander kill me as he did Clytus, if afterward he would come and weep over my body. It is all real to me; my heart is in my throat when I see Caesar in the Senate-house, his back against a pillar like a stag at bay, the conspirators' knives searching for his life; and I am in ecstasy when Cleopatra floats by me in her gilded barge, surrounded by Nereids and young pages, naked and beautiful as the day. The perfumed breeze blows across my face, and I open my big nostrils, the better to inhale the delicious fragrance."