The Magic Skin by Honoré de Balzac
page 66 of 343 (19%)
page 66 of 343 (19%)
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"You will find me to-morrow, sir." "This very moment," Nathan answered. "Come, come, you pair of fire-eaters!" "You are another!" said the prime mover in the quarrel. "Ah, I can't stand upright, perhaps?" asked the pugnacious Nathan, straightening himself up like a stag-beetle about to fly. He stared stupidly round the table, then, completely exhausted by the effort, sank back into his chair, and mutely hung his head. "Would it not have been nice," the critic said to his neighbor, "to fight about a book I have neither read nor seen?" "Emile, look out for your coat; your neighbor is growing pale," said Bixiou. "Kant? Yet another ball flung out for fools to sport with, sir! Materialism and spiritualism are a fine pair of battledores with which charlatans in long gowns keep a shuttlecock a-going. Suppose that God is everywhere, as Spinoza says, or that all things proceed from God, as says St. Paul . . . the nincompoops, the door shuts or opens, but isn't the movement the same? Does the fowl come from the egg, or the egg from the fowl? . . . Just hand me some duck . . . and there, you have all science." |
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