"The idea! Why? Because life is not an idyll, not by a good deal. We
live by killing, destroying everything there is around us; we get to
be something by ridding ourselves of our enemies. We are in a constant
struggle."

"I don't see this struggle. Formerly, when men were savages, perhaps....
But now!"

"Now, just the same. The one difference is that the material struggle,
with the muscles, has been changed to an intellectual one, a social one.
Nowadays, it is evident, a man does not have to hunt the bull or the
wild boar in the prairies; he finds their dead bodies at the butcher's.
Neither does the modern citizen have to knock his rival down to overcome
him; nowadays the enemy is conquered at the desk, in the factory, in
the editor's office, in the laboratory.... The struggle is just as
infuriated and violent as it was in the depths of the forests, only it
is colder and more courteous in form."

"I don't believe it. You won't convince me."

Laura plucked a branch of white blossoms from a wild-rose bush and put
it into her bosom.

"Well, Caesar, let us go to the hotel," she said; "it is very late."

"I will escort you a little way," I suggested.

We went out on the highway. The night was palpitating as it filled
itself with stars. Laura hummed Neapolitan songs. We walked along a