You write charmingly in Greek, and much more legibly than you write in
French. But who is your Greek teacher? You can not make me believe that
you have learned to write that running hand from a book only. Who is the
professor of rhetoric at D.?
Your letter is very gracious. I say this because I know that you enjoy
compliments, and also because it is true. As I shall never learn,
however, to correct my unfortunate habit of saying what I think to
people who are not _all the world_ to me, you may as well know that I
see you are making rapid progress in wickedness, and that I am grieved
thereby. You are becoming ironical, sarcastic, and even diabolical. All
these words are, as you know, taken from the Greek, and your professor
will explain to you what I mean by diabolical; διἁβλος, that is,
calumniator. You ridicule my best qualities, and even when you praise
me you do so with reservations and hesitations which rob the praise of
all its worth.
It is a fact that at one time in my life I frequented bad society, but I
was attracted to it through curiosity only, and I was always there as a
stranger in a strange country. As for good society, I have found it
often enough deadly tiresome. There are two places where I am at ease,
at least, where I flatter myself I am in my proper element: first, among
unpretentious people whom I have known for a long time; secondly, in a
Spanish venta, with mule-drivers and Andalusian peasants. Write this in
my funeral oration, and you will have told the truth.
If I mention my funeral oration, it is because I believe it is time for
you to compose it. I have been seriously ill for a long time, and
especially for the last two weeks. I have attacks of dizziness, spasms
of pain, and frightful headaches. Something terrible must have happened
to my brain, and I fancy that before long I may become, as Homer says, a
companion of the shadowy Proserpine. I should like to know what you
would say then. I should be charmed if you were to grieve for two weeks.
Do you think this is too much to ask?
I am spending part of the night writing, or else in tearing up what I
wrote the night before, consequently I make slow progress. What I am
writing interests me, but the question is, Will it interest the public?
I consider the ancients far more interesting than ourselves; they had no
such paltry aims, nor were they so engrossed as we are in a multitude of
silly trifles. I find that my hero, Julius Caesar, at the age of
fifty-three, committed all sorts of follies for the sake of Cleopatra,
forgetting all else for her; this is why he came so near drowning, both
literally and figuratively. What man of our century, among our
statesmen, I mean, who is not completely callous, completely heartless,
by the time he aspires to a seat in the Senate? I should like to explain
the difference between that age and our own, but how shall I do it?
Have you come to a passage in the _Odyssey_ that I consider wonderful?
It is where Ulysses is living with Alcinoüs, still unknown, and after
dinner a poet comes before him and sings of the war of Troy. The
little that I have seen of Greece gives me a clearer understanding of
Homer. Everywhere throughout the _Odyssey_ is seen that amazing love
cherished by the Greeks for their native land. There is in modern Greek
a charming word: it is ξενιτεἱα, an alien. To be in a strange land is
for a Greek the greatest of misfortunes, but to die there is the most
terrible calamity of which they can conceive.
You scoff at my epicureanism. Have you ever tried to imagine the nature
of the entrails which the Greek heroes ate with such relish? The modern
philosophers still eat them: they are called κονκονρἑτζι, and are
simply delicious. There are little wooden skewers made of the fragrant
wood of the mastic tree, with something crisp and spicy around them,
which makes one readily understand why the priests used to reserve for
themselves this dainty morsel from their victims.
Good-bye. If I were to pursue this subject, you would think me more of
a glutton than I am. I have no appetite at all, and nothing in the way
of little delicacies can any longer tempt me. This means that I am only
fit to throw to the crows. There will be deuced weather all through
October, and that will finish me!