LAZ. (_looking about_). Are they not here?
JAV. No; fortunately it occurred to them that you would work better alone.
LAZ. Well, whatever you say, I think that I am presentable. Eh? My head doesn’t feel bad--a delicious vagueness. I seem to be encircled by a mist--a very soft mist; and through its texture there shine some little stars. In short, peaceful sensations, very peaceful.
LAZ. Don’t I tell you so? My legs indeed give way, but without pain. I walk in the midst of softness. (_Laughing._) My head among the clouds and the ground of cotton-wool. Divine! So ought the universe to be--that is, _quilted_. Lord! what a world has been made of it--so rough, so hard, so inconvenient. At every step you stumble and injure yourself--rocks, rugged stones, sharp points, peaks, angles, and little corners and big corners. The world should be round--quite so, and round it is; roundness is perfection; but it should be an immeasurable sphere of eider-down, so that, if a citizen falls, he may always fall amid softness--thus! (_Letting himself fall in the arm-chair, or on one of the cushioned stools at the side of the table._)
JAV. All very well--but you really are not strong.
LAZ. I am not strong? Stronger than you--stronger than you. Stronger.
JAV. I told you that you should not drink. It does you harm; your health is broken down.
LAZ. I’m broken down? I?--How? I have not been a saint, but neither have I been a madman. I am young: I have always thought that I was strong: and, through drinking two or three glasses, and smoking a puro and laughing a little--here am I transformed into a stupid being! Because, now, it is not that I am broken down, as you say, nor that I am drunk, as you suppose--it is that I feel simply stupid. No; and see, now, it is not so disagreeable to be stupid: one feels--a sort of merriment, as it were. That’s why so many people are merry. (_Laughing._) That’s why! That’s why! Now I am falling into this same stupidity--that’s why, just so.
JAV. Attend to me, and understand what I say to you, if you are in a condition to understand me.
LAZ. If I can understand you? I understand everything now. The world is transparent to me: your head is made of crystal (_laughing_), and written in very black and tortuous letters I read your thought--you suppose I am very bad. Poor Javier! (_Laughing._)