A good roguish thing is also the long silence, and to look, like the winter-sky, out of a clear, round-eyed countenance:⁠—

—Like it to stifle one’s sun, and one’s inflexible solar will: verily, this art and this winter-roguishness have I learnt well !

My best-loved wickedness and art is it, that my silence hath learned not to betray itself by silence.

Clattering with diction and dice, I outwit the solemn assistants: all those stern watchers, shall my will and purpose elude.

That no one might see down into my depth and into mine ultimate will⁠—for that purpose did I devise the long clear silence.

Many a shrewd one did I find: he veiled his countenance and made his water muddy, that no one might see therethrough and thereunder.