When?
After death.
What a fine dream! After my death it will be a very clever person who can catch me. Have a handful of dust seized by a shadow-hand, if you can. Let us tell the truth, we who are initiated, and who have raised the veil of Isis:
there is no such thing as either good or evil; there is vegetation.
Let us seek the real.
Let us get to the bottom of it.
Let us go into it thoroughly.
What the deuce! let us go to the bottom of it!
We must scent out the truth; dig in the earth for it, and seize it.
Then it gives you exquisite joys. Then you grow strong, and you laugh.
I am square on the bottom, I am.
Immortality, Bishop, is a chance, a waiting for dead men's shoes.
Ah! what a charming promise! trust to it, if you like! What a fine lot Adam has!
We are souls, and we shall be angels, with blue wings on our shoulder-blades. Do come to my assistance: is it not Tertullian who says that the blessed shall travel from star to star?
Very well.
We shall be the grasshoppers of the stars. And then, besides, we shall see God.
Ta, ta, ta!
What twaddle all these paradises are!
God is a nonsensical monster.
I would not say that in the Moniteur, egad! but I may whisper it among friends. Inter pocula.