![]() ![]() How many Platanopolitans escape the various herds? These rare independents, of a skeptical spirit, willingly suspend judgment. Radicals or Catholics, he wasn’t judged any more favorably by party members. Protestants or royalists, socialists or Freemasons, the faithful of all religions declared him mad. He defended himself from feeling any sentiment, and only ever spoke with disdain of pity: “A low and soft passion, good for women or for other low natures who the indigence of their nature condemns to choose between weak gentleness and cruelty. The bizarre personage was also not what is called a philanthropist. Our bizarre personage didn’t invest his money anywhere so that it could be returned to him increased a hundred-fold in the other world, not even at the bank of the merciful God. ![]() He never stepped foot in a church, and meeting a priest caused a smile of contempt to cross his lips. At the end of every month our eccentric distributed almost his entire salary to the poor. There is nothing more common than a miser in small cities, and this vice surprises no one there. He sustained his large body with cheese, cheap cold cuts, and a few vegetables that he boiled with no other seasoning than salt. The young professor only drank water, and he drank this directly from the ladle. His pots and pans and his table service, most often relegated and tossed into the bottom of the armoire, consisted of a kettle, a ladle, a salt box, a knife, a spoon and a fork. The young professor who recommended in Greek to know oneself took, on the corner of a rustic table, common and meager meals. On high, a large writing desk bore, in counsel or ironically, the Socratic motto in the original: know thyself. ![]() But there was a sign wealth that, in its very banality and bourgeois character was strange: an armoire topped with a mirror spread its solid and flat light. They weren’t surprised to find at a professor’s house many books, some of which were rare. And yet the rare visitors admitted to what the occupant called “Diogenes’ barrel” noted certain particular luxuries. A narrow steel bed, an immense kitchen table covered with papers which, had they been spread out, would have allowed countless ink stains to be seen three backless straw chairs. Not a painting the length of the walls not an engraving, or even a postcard or photograph. Long brown hair, shaggy and standing upright, an abundant and hairy beard that met it black sparkling eyes, buried deep beneath his bushy brows and a mouth large as a laugh or eloquence was not the thing about him that surprised most strongly or lastingly.ĭressed in a barely decent fashion he lived, in the working class quarter, in a room that a poor student would have disdained. The body of a young giant, formidable and rudimentary large, irregular, even violent traits a passionate physiognomy, at times lightened with malice or elevated by lyricism, at other times heavy with a reflective seriousness. Figuière, Paris, 1920 ĬopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) 2009.Ī few years ago the University of Plantopolis had a professor of foreign literature who was considered unusual. ![]()
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