Student: And men as stupid as ever. We have no one like Henry Stephen. Have you ever read Galdos’ _Dona Perfecta_? In every country you will find such nests of provincials. Change but a few names and customs. Each Klein-Stadt has its local gods and will kill those who offend them. In one place it is religion, in another some crank theory of hygiene or morals, or even of prudery which takes no moral concern. Rabelais: Yet all peoples act the same way. The same so-called “vices” are everywhere present, unless your nation has invented some new ones. Student: Greed and hypocrisy, there is little novelty to be got out of either. At present there is a new tone, a new _timbre_ of lying, a sort of habit, almost a faculty for refraining from connecting words with a fact. An inconception of their interrelations. Rabelais: Let us keep out of politics. Student: Damn it, have you ever met presbyterians? Rabelais: You forget that I lived in the time of John Calvin. Student: Let us leave this and talk of your books. Rabelais: My book has the fault of most books, there are too many words in it. I was tainted with monkish habits, with the marasmus of allegory, of putting one thing for another: the clumsiest method of satire. I doubt if any modern will read me. Student: I knew a man read you for joy of the words, for the opulence of your vocabulary. Rabelais: Which would do him no good unless he could keep all the words on his tongue. Tell me, can you read them, they are often merely piled up in heaps. Student: I confess that I can not. I take a page and then stop. Rabelais: Allegory, all damnable allegory! And can you read Brantôme? Student: I can read a fair chunk of Brantôme. The repetition is wearing. Rabelais: And you think your age is as stupid as mine? Even letters are better, a critical sense is developed. Student: We lack the old vigour. Rabelais: A phrase you have got from professors! Vigour was not lacking in Stendhal, I doubt if it is lacking in your day. And as for the world being as stupid, are your friends tied to the stake, as was Etienne Dolet, with an “Ave” wrung out of him to get him strangled instead of roasted. Do you have to stand making professions like Budé?!! Vivens vidensque gloria mea frui Volo: nihil juvat mortuum Quod vel diserte scripserit vel fecerit Animose. Student: What is that? Rabelais: Some verses of Dolet’s. And are you starved like Desperiers, Bonaventura, and driven to suicide? Student: The last auto-da-fe was in 1759. The inquisition reestablished in 1824. Rabelais: Spain again! I was speaking of.... Student: We are not yet out of the wood. There is no end to this warfare. You talk of freedom. Have you heard of the Hammersmith borough council, or the society to suppress all brothels in “Rangoon and other stations in Burmah?” If it is not creed it is morals. Your life and works would not be possible nowadays. To put it mildly, you would be docked your professorship.