"Then we light two cigars, just alike; incited by my friend to talk on a thousand different topics, I often let mine go out, and he gives me a light again from his own.... I am like an old husband who relights a score of times from the lips of a young beauty the flame of his passion, as impotent as many times over. O my friend! when, then, will happier days shine forth? "Tell me, my friend, in those parts from whence thou comest, are men filled with hope and courage? Do they keep constant and faithful to the worship of our great goddess, Liberty? ... Tell me, if thou knowest, how long we must still chafe at the humiliating bit which condemns us to silence?... "How it hinders me from flinging down my part of servitude! How it delays me from seeing the vain titles of tyranny, which oppress us, reduced to powder; from seeing the ashes of a dishonoured diadem scattered at the breath of patriots as the ashes of my pipe are scattered by mine! My soul is weary of waiting, friend; I warn thee, and with horror I meditate upon the doings of such sad waywardness. See how this people, roused wholly by the infamous sect of Loyola, rushes to fling itself before their strange processions! Young and old, men and women, all hasten to receive their hypocritical and futile benedictions! The fools! if the plague passed under a canopy they would run to see it pass by and kneel before it! Tell me, friend, is such a people fit for liberty? Is it not rather condemned to grow old and still be kept in the infantine swaddling clothes of a two-fold bondage? "Men are still but children. Nevertheless, the human race increases and goes on progressing continually, and meanwhile stretches its bonds till they break. The time draws near when it will no longer listen to the lame man who calls upon it to stop, when it will no longer ask its way of the blind. May the world become enlightened! God desires it!... And we, my friend, we will smoke whilst we watch for the coming dawn. Happily, friend, liberty has her secrets, her resources. This people, which seems to us for ever brutalised, is, however, educating itself and every day becomes more enlightened! Friend, we will forgive the slaves for running after distractions; we will bear with the immodest mother who prides herself that her daughters will pass for virgins when they have been blessed. We will not be surprised that old scoundrels hope to sweat out the seeds of their crimes, exhausting themselves to carry despicable images.