the damask tablecloth, and the festival, and the orgies, and the

tippling and drunkenness, and the guests, and those with their elbows on

the table, and those with their paws under it, and the insolent who give

and the idiots who accept, and to spit it all back again in the face of

Providence, and fling all the earth to the heavens? In the meantime let

us stick our claws into Josiana.

Thus dreamed Barkilphedro. Such were the ragings of his soul. It is the

habit of the envious man to absolve himself, amalgamating with his

personal grievance the public wrongs.

All the wild forms of hateful passions went and came in the intellect

of this ferocious being. At the corners of old maps of the world of the

fifteenth century are great vague spaces without shape or name, on which

are written these three words, Hic sunt leones. Such a dark corner is

there also in man. Passions grow and growl somewhere within us, and we

may say of an obscure portion of our souls, "There are lions here."

Is this scaffolding of wild reasoning absolutely absurd? does it lack a

certain justice? We must confess it does not.

It is fearful to think that judgment within us is not justice. Judgment

is the relative, justice is the absolute. Think of the difference

between a judge and a just man.

Wicked men lead conscience astray with authority. There are gymnastics

of untruth. A sophist is a forger, and this forger sometimes brutalizes

372

The Man Who Laughs