Lancelot was not yet past the era at which young geniuses are apt to
'talk book' at little.

'For what?' he answered, flashing up according to his fashion. 'To
be;--to be great; to have done one mighty work before we die, and
live, unloved or loved, upon the lips of men. For this all long who
are not mere apes and wall-flies.'

'So longed the founders of Babel,' answered Argemone, carelessly, to
this tirade. She had risen a strange fish, the cunning beauty, and
now she was trying her fancy flies over him one by one.

'And were they so far wrong?' answered he. 'From the Babel society
sprung our architecture, our astronomy, politics, and colonisation.
No doubt the old Hebrew sheiks thought them impious enough, for
daring to build brick walls instead of keeping to the good old-
fashioned tents, and gathering themselves into a nation instead of
remaining a mere family horde; and gave their own account of the
myth, just as the antediluvian savages gave theirs of that strange
Eden scene, by the common interpretation of which the devil is made
the first inventor of modesty. Men are all conservatives;
everything new is impious, till we get accustomed to it; and if it
fails, the mob piously discover a divine vengeance in the mischance,
from Babel to Catholic Emancipation.'

Lancelot had stuttered horribly during the latter part of this most
heterodox outburst, for he had begun to think about himself, and try
to say a fine thing, suspecting all the while that it might not be
true. But Argemone did not remark the stammering: the new thoughts
startled and pained her; but there was a daring grace about them.