This resolution being taken and well taken, a friend of his comes to visit him, sees him thoughtful, asks the reason and learns his design. “What, (says he to him) have you not still spirit enough to withstand reason? She knocks, and it is going to be opened! what do you mean? Reason may be of use to a young man, to curb the fury of his passions; but must be fatal to an old one, in totally extinguishing the little relish he has left for pleasures. What a fine sight will it be, to see Plutarch’s morals, Nicole’s essays, and Pascal’s thoughts lodged in thy brain, close by Bocace’s novels, La Fontaine’s tales, and Rousseau’s epigrams! Believe me: Reason is good only for those, who have cultivated it long ago; heads made like ours cannot suit it. Our maxims and reason’s are too contradictory; and instead of regulating, it would throw all into disorder and confusion.”
“But (replied our new convert) dost thou know what thou art doing with thy extraordinary eloquence? never was so much reason used to prove, that we must act against reason. Come, let us go, my dear marquis, a free supper waits us at the ... where the nymph, thou knowest, will compleat my conviction: From thence we will go to the ball. Tomorrow, champagne at your cousin the countess’s, and lansquenet, at our friend the President’s.”
We walked toward the south. On this side, Giphantia ends in a point, and forms a little promontory, from whence there is a large prospect. This promontory is covered all over with a plant, whose boughs descend and creep every way. This is the production of the second Kernel. The plant never bears either leaves or blossoms, or fruit: It is formed by an infinite number of very thin small fibres, which branch out of one another.
View carefully the fibres (says the Prefect to me.) Dost thou see at their extremity, little longish bodies, which move so briskly? They are small maggots, which this plant breeds; whether vegetation, carried beyond its usual bounds, produces them; or whether there comes at the extremity of the fibres, a sort of corruption, by which they are engendered. In time, these maggots waste away so as to become invisible: But withal they get wings, and growing flies, they disperse themselves over the earth. There, they stick fast to men, and cease not to infest them with a sting given them by nature. And as the tarantula, with the poison which she leaves in the wound she has made, inspires an immoderate desire to leap and dance, just so these small insects cause, according to their different kinds, different Itchings. Such are the itch of talking, the itch of writing, the itch of knowing, the itch of shining, the itch of being known, with a hundred others. Hence, all the motions, men put themselves into, all the efforts they make, all the passions that stir them.
