Still, Ambrose maintained his position. He would even affirm that for crude realism the Eastern Tales were absolutely unique. "Of course," he said, "I take realism to mean absolute and essential truthfulness of description, as opposed to merely conventional treatment. Zola is a realist, not--as the imbeciles suppose--because he described--well, rather minutely--many unpleasant sights and sounds and smells and emotions, but because he was a poet, a seer; because, in spite of his pseudo-philosophies, his cheap materialisms, he saw the true heart, the reality of things. Take _La Terre_; do you think it is 'realistic' because it describes minutely, and probably faithfully, the event of a cow calving? Not in the least; the local vet. who was called in could probably do all that as well, or better. It is 'realist' because it goes behind all the brutalities, all the piggeries and inhumanities, of those frightful people, and shows us the strange, mad, transcendent passion that lay behind all those things--the wild desire for the land--a longing that burned, that devoured, that inflamed, that drove men to hell and death as would a passion for a goddess who might never be attained. Remember how 'La Beauce' is personified, how the earth swells and quickens before one, how every clod and morsel of the soil cries for its service and its sacrifice and its victims--I call _that_ realism. "The _Arabian Nights_ is also profoundly realistic, though both the subject-matter and the method of treatment--the technique--are very different from the subject-matter and the technique of Zola. Of course, there may be people who think that if you describe a pigsty well you are a 'realist,' and if you describe an altar well you are 'romantic.' ... I do not know that the mental processes of Crétins form a very interesting subject for discussion." One may surmise, if one will, that the sudden violence of the change was a sufficient cause of exaltation. That detestable Lupton left behind; no town, but a collection of stink and poison factories and slave quarters; that more detestable school, more ridiculous than the Academy of Lagado; that most detestable routine, games, lessons and the Doctor's sermons--the transition was tremendous to the freedom of fabled London, of the unknown streets and unending multitudes. Ambrose said he hesitated to talk of that walk, lest he should be thought an aimless liar. They strolled for hours seeing the most wonderful things, the most wonderful people; but he declared that the case was similar to that of the Benedictine--he could never discover again the regions that he had perambulated. Somewhere, he said, close to the Château de Chinon there must be a passage which had since been blocked up. By it was the entrance to Fairyland.