_He._--If he has done anything for anybody, it is without knowing it. He is a philosopher after his fashion. He thinks of nobody but himself. His wife and his daughter may die as soon as they please; provided the church bells that toll for them continue to sound the _twelfth_ and the _seventeenth_, all will be well. It is lucky for him, and that is what I especially prize in your men of genius. They are only good for one thing; outside of that, nothing. They do not know what it is to be citizens, fathers, mothers, kinsfolk, friends. Between ourselves, it is no bad thing to be like them at every point, but we should not wish the grain to become common. We must have men; but men of genius, no; no, on my word; of them we need none. 'Tis they who change the face of the globe; and in the smallest things folly is so common and so almighty, that you cannot mend it without an infinite disturbance. Part of what they have dreamt comes to pass, and part remains as it was; hence two gospels, the dress of a harlequin. The wisdom of Rabelais's moral is the true wisdom both for his own repose and that of other people: to do one's duty so so, always to speak well of the prior, and to let the world go as it lists. It must go well, for most people are content with it. If I knew history enough, I should prove to you that evil has always come about here below through a few men of genius, but I do not know history, no more than I know anything else. The deuce take me, if I have learnt anything, or if I find myself a pin the worse for not having learnt anything. I was one day at the table of the minister of the King of----, who has brains enough for four, and he showed as plain as one and one make two, that nothing was more useful to people than falsehood, nothing more mischievous than truth. I don't remember his proofs very clearly, but it evidently followed from them that men of genius are detestable, and that if a child at its birth bore on its brow the mark of that dangerous gift of nature, it ought to be smothered or else thrown to the ducks. _I._--Yet such people, foes as they are to genius, all lay claim to it. _He._--I daresay they think so in their own minds, but I doubt if they would venture to admit it. _I._--Ah, that is their modesty. So you conceived from that a frightful antipathy to genius. _He._--One that I shall never get over.