"Yes. I felt all that at first, and suffered. I was just as disgusted as you are. When I went for walks as a boy, the mere sight of some of the crowded dirty streets made me ill. They gave me all sorts of fantastic horrors, which I dared not speak of. I used to think: 'If there were an earthquake now, I should be dead, and stay here for ever and ever'; and that seemed to me the most appalling thing that could happen. I never thought that one day I should live in one of them of my own free-will, and that in all probability I shall die there. And then it became easier to put up with: it had to. It still revolts me: but I try not to think of it. When I climb the stairs I close my eyes, and stop my ears, and hold my nose, and shut off all my senses and withdraw utterly into myself. And then, over the roof there, I can see the tops of the branches of an acacia. I sit here in this corner so that I don't see anything else: and in the evening when the wind rustles through them I fancy that I am far away from Paris: and the mighty roar of a forest has never seemed so sweet to me as the gentle murmuring of those few frail leaves at certain moments." "Yes," said Christophe. "I've no doubt that you are always dreaming; but it's all wrong to waste your fancy in such a struggle against the sordid things of life, when you might be using it in the creation of other lives." "Isn't it the common lot? Don't you yourself waste energy in anger and bitter struggles?" "That's not the same thing. It's natural to me: what I was born for. Look at my arms and hands! Fighting is the breath of life to me. But you haven't any too much strength: that's obvious." Olivier looked sadly down at his thin wrists, and said: "Yes. I am weak: I always have been. But what can I do? One must live?" "How do you make your living?" "I teach." "Teach what?" "Everything--Latin, Greek, history. I coach for degrees. And I lecture on Moral Philosophy at the Municipal School." "Lecture on what?" "Moral Philosophy." "What in thunder is that? Do they teach morality in French schools?" Olivier smiled: "Of course." "Is there enough in it to keep you talking for ten minutes?" "I have to lecture for twelve hours a week." "Do you teach them to do evil, then?" "What do you mean?" "There's no need for so much talk to find out what good is." "Or to leave it undiscovered either." "Good gracious, yes! Leave it undiscovered. There are worse ways of doing good than knowing nothing about it. Good isn't a matter of knowledge: it's a matter of action. It's only your neurasthenics who go haggling about morality: and the first of all moral laws is not to be neurasthenic. Rotten pedants! They are like cripples teaching people how to walk." "But they don't do their talking for such as you. You _know_: but there are so many who do not know!"