I did not speak. He, too, was silent for a long time. “They say that French cleverness⁠ ⁠…” he babbled suddenly, as though in a fever⁠ ⁠… “that’s false, it always has been. Why libel French cleverness? It’s simply Russian indolence, our degrading impotence to produce ideas, our revolting parasitism in the rank of nations. Ils sont tout simplement des paresseux , and not French cleverness. Oh, the Russians ought to be extirpated for the good of humanity, like noxious parasites! We’ve been striving for something utterly, utterly different. I can make nothing of it. I have given up understanding. ‘Do you understand,’ I cried to him, ‘that if you have the guillotine in the foreground of your programme and are so enthusiastic about it too, it’s simply because nothing’s easier than cutting off heads, and nothing’s harder than to have an idea. Vous êtes des paresseux! Votre drapeau est un guenille, une impuissance. It’s those carts, or, what was it?⁠ ⁠… the rumble of the carts carrying bread to humanity being more important than the Sistine Madonna, or, what’s the saying?⁠ ⁠… une bêtise dans ce genre.