“And what about me?” cried Armand. “No, my dear fellow, no; all the same I’m not so stupid as all that. I’ve still intelligence enough to understand that everything I’ve been saying is idiotic.” “Can’t you ever talk seriously?” “Very well; we’ll talk seriously, since seriousness is the style you favour. Rachel, my eldest sister, is going blind. Her sight has been getting very bad lately. For the last two years, she hasn’t been able to read without glasses. I thought at first it would be all right if she were to change them. But it wasn’t. At my request, she went to see an oculist. It seems the sensitiveness of the retina is failing. You understand there are two very different things--on the one hand, a defective power of accommodation of the crystalline, which can be remedied by glasses. But even after they have brought the visual image to the proper focus, that image may make an insufficient impression on the retina and be only dimly transmitted to the brain. Do I make myself clear? You hardly know Rachel, so don’t imagine that I am trying to arouse your pity for her. Then why am I telling you all this?... Because, reflecting on my own case, I became aware that not only images but ideas may strike the brain with more or less clearness. A person with a dull mind receives only confused perceptions; but for that very reason he cannot realize clearly that he is dull. He would only begin to suffer from his stupidity if he were conscious of it; and in order to be conscious of it, he would have to become intelligent. Now imagine for a moment such a monster--an imbecile who is intelligent enough to understand that he is stupid.” “Why, he would cease to be an imbecile.” “No, my dear fellow; you may believe me, because as a matter of fact, _I_ am that very imbecile.” Olivier shrugged his shoulders. Armand went on: “A real imbecile has no consciousness of any idea beyond his own. _I_ am conscious of the _beyond_. But all the same I’m an imbecile, because I know that I shall never be able to attain that ‘_beyond_’!...” “But, old fellow,” said Olivier, in a burst of sympathy, “we are all made so that we might be better, and I think the greatest intelligence is precisely the one that suffers most from its own limitations.” Armand shook off the hand that Olivier had placed affectionately on his arm. “Others,” said he, “have the feeling of what they possess; I have only the feeling of what I lack. Lack of money, lack of strength, lack of intelligence, lack of love--an everlasting deficit. I shall never be anything but below the mark.” He went up to the toilette table, dipped a hairbrush in the dirty water in the basin and plastered his hair down in hideous fashion over his forehead. “I told you I hadn’t written anything; but a few days ago, I did have an idea for an essay, which I should have called: _On Incapacity_. But of course I was incapable of writing it. I should have said.... But I’m boring you.”