_He._--You are right. The important point is that you and I should be here; provided only that you and I are you and I, then let all besides go as it can. The best order of things, in my notion, is that in which I was to have a place, and a plague on the most perfect of worlds, if I don't belong to it! I would rather exist, and even be a bad hand at reasoning, than not exist at all. _I._--There is nobody but thinks as you do, and whoever brings his indictment against the order of things, forgets that he is renouncing his own existence. _He._--That is true. _I._--So let us accept things as they are; let us see how much they cost us and how much they give us, and leave the whole as it is, for we do not know it well enough either to praise or blame it; and perhaps after all it is neither good nor ill, if it is necessary, as so many good folk suppose. _He._--Now you are going beyond me. What you say seems like philosophy, and I warn you that I never meddle with that. All that I know is that I should be very well pleased to be somebody else, on the chance of being a genius and a great man; yes, I must agree. I have something here that tells me so. I never in my life heard a man praised, that his eulogy did not fill me with secret fury. I am full of envy. If I hear something about their private life that is a discredit to them, I listen with pleasure: it brings us nearer to a level; I bear my mediocrity more comfortably. I say to myself: Ah, thou couldst never have done _Mahomet_, nor the eulogy on Maupeou. So I have always been, and I always shall be, mortified at my own mediocrity. Yes, I tell you I am mediocre, and it provokes me. I never heard the overture to the _Indes galantes_ performed, nor the _Profonds abimes de Tenare, Nuit, eternelle nuit_, sung without saying to myself: That is what thou wilt never do. So I was jealous of my uncle. _I._--If that is the only thing that chagrins you, it is hardly worth the trouble. _He._--'Tis nothing, only a passing humour. [Then he set himself to hum the overture and the air he had spoken of, and went on:]