But can it be said that speed _exists_ in the same way
as the legs which produce it exist, or in any way? Is it a thing?"
I was about to disdain to reply, when I saw an old man approaching, with
bowed head, apparently in deep distress. As he drew near he saluted my
distinguished interlocutor in the manner of the country, by putting out
his tongue to its full extent and moving it slowly from side to side.
Gnarmag-Zote acknowledged the civility by courteously spitting, and the
old man, advancing, seated himself at the great officer's feet, saying:
"Exalted Sir, I have just lost my wife by death, and am in a most
melancholy frame of mind. He who has mastered all the vices of the
ancients and wrested from nature the secret of the normal curvature of
cats' claws can surely spare from his wisdom a few rays of philosophy to
cheer an old man's gloom. Pray tell me what I shall do to assuage my
grief."
The reader can, perhaps, faintly conceive my astonishment when
Gnarmag-Zote gravely replied: "Kill yourself."
"Surely," I cried, "you would not have this honest fellow procure oblivion
(since you think that death is nothing else) by so rash an act!"
"An act that Gnarmag-Zote advises," he said, coldly, "is not rash."
"But death," I said, "death, whatever else it may be, is an end of life.
This old man is now in sorrow almost insupportable. But a few days and it
will be supportable; a few months and it will have become no more than a
tender melancholy.
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