“You are silent,” Herr Settembrini said, moved. “You and your native land, you preserve a silence which seems to cover a reservation⁠—and which gives one no hint of what goes on in your depths. You do not love the Word, or you have it not, or you are chary with it to unfriendliness. The articulate world does not know where it is with you. My friend, that is perilous. Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictious word, preserves contact⁠—it is silence which isolates. The suspicion lies to hand that you will seek to break your silence with deeds. You will ask Cousin Giacomo” (Settembrini had taken to calling Joachim Giacomo, for convenience sake) “to step out in front of your silence,

“ ‘And thrice he smites, and thrice his blows

Deal death, before him fly his foes⁠ ⁠…’ ”

“ ‘And thrice he smites, and thrice his blows Deal death, before him fly his foes⁠ ⁠…’ ”