"I am a millionaire!"
"If you are not a millionaire, you are most certainly drunk."
"Drunk with power.
I can kill you!—Silence!
I am Nero!
I am Nebuchadnezzar!"
"But, Raphael, we are in queer company, and you ought to keep quiet for the sake of your own dignity."
"My life has been silent too long.
I mean to have my revenge now on the world at large.
I will not amuse myself by squandering paltry five-franc pieces; I will reproduce and sum up my epoch by absorbing human lives, human minds, and human souls.
There are the treasures of pestilence—that is no paltry kind of wealth, is it?
I will wrestle with fevers—yellow, blue, or green—with whole armies, with gibbets.
I can possess Foedora—Yet no, I do not want Foedora; she is a disease; I am dying of Foedora.
I want to forget Foedora."
"If you keep on calling out like this, I shall take you into the dining-room."
"Do you see this skin?
It is Solomon's will.
Solomon belongs to me—a little varlet of a king!
Arabia is mine, Arabia Petraea to boot; and the universe, and you too, if I choose.
If I choose—Ah! be careful.
I can buy up all our journalist's shop; you shall be my valet.
You shall be my valet, you shall manage my newspaper.
Valet! valet, that is to say, free from aches and pains, because he has no brains."
At the word, Emile carried Raphael off into the dining-room.
"All right," he remarked; "yes, my friend, I am your valet.
But you are about to be editor-in-chief of a newspaper; so be quiet, and behave properly, for my sake.
Have you no regard for me?"
"Regard for you!
You shall have Havana cigars, with this bit of shagreen: always with this skin, this supreme bit of shagreen.
It is a cure for corns, and efficacious remedy.
Do you suffer?
I will remove them."
"Never have I known you so senseless——"
"Senseless, my friend?
Not at all.
This skin contracts whenever I form a wish—'tis a paradox.
There is a Brahmin underneath it!
The Brahmin must be a droll fellow, for our desires, look you, are bound to expand——"
"Yes, yes——"
"I tell you——"
"Yes, yes, very true, I am quite of your opinion—our desires expand——"
"The skin, I tell you."
"Yes."
"You don't believe me.
I know you, my friend; you are as full of lies as a new-made king."
"How can you expect me to follow your drunken maunderings?"
"I will bet you I can prove it.
Let us measure it——"
"Goodness! he will never get off to sleep," exclaimed Emile, as he watched Raphael rummaging busily in the dining-room.
Thanks to the peculiar clearness with which external objects are sometimes projected on an inebriated brain, in sharp contrast to its own obscure imaginings, Valentin found an inkstand and a table-napkin, with the quickness of a monkey, repeating all the time: