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with directions written on the sole
Sep. 11th, 2012 12:19 amNow the Olympics and the Paralympics are over, let us turn the news cameras back to the government and Parliament, and see what comes out of them. No doubt they will spend a while trying to profit from the recent sporting events.
It's difficult. I would like to have their incompetence shown publicly, but I don't want anyone or anything to be damaged by their incompetence. I'm not sure what to wish for, except to wish for elections soon and to see them gone.
At the moment, I have difficulty in believing that the current Government could pour piss out of a boot with the directions written on the sole.
---
The Master evidently meant to say more, but before he could say anything M. Durand had stepped right up to him and was speaking.
He was speaking exactly as a French bourgeois speaks to the manager of a restaurant. That is, he spoke with rattling and breathless rapidity, but with no incoherence, and therefore with no emotion. It was a steady, monotonous vivacity, which came not seemingly from passion, but merely from the reason having been sent off at a gallop. He was saying something like this:
"You refuse me my half-bottle of Medoc, the drink the most wholesome and the most customary. You refuse me the company and obedience of my daughter, which Nature herself indicates. You refuse me the beef and mutton, without pretence that it is a fast of the Church. You now forbid me the promenade, a thing necessary to a person of my age. It is useless to tell me that you do all this by law. Law rests upon the social contract. If the citizen finds himself despoiled of such pleasures and powers as he would have had even in the savage state, the social contract is annulled."
"It's no good chattering away, Monsieur," said Hutton, for the Master was silent. "The place is covered with machine-guns. We've got to obey our orders, and so have you."
"The machinery is of the most perfect," assented Durand, somewhat irrelevantly; "worked by petroleum, I believe. I only ask you to admit that if such things fall below the comfort of barbarism, the social contract is annulled. It is a pretty little point of theory."
"Oh! I dare say," said Hutton.
Durand bowed quite civilly and withdrew.
[...]
Two of the three passages leading out of the hall were choked with blue smoke. Another instant and the hall was full of the fog of it, and red sparks began to swarm like scarlet bees.
"The place is on fire!" cried Quayle with a scream of indecent terror. "Oh, who can have done it? How can it have happened?"
A light had come into Turnbull's eyes. "How did the French Revolution happen?" he asked.
"Oh, how should I know!" wailed the other.
"Then I will tell you," said Turnbull; "it happened because some people fancied that a French grocer was as respectable as he looked."
Even as he spoke, as if by confirmation, old M. Durand re-entered the smoky room quite placidly, wiping the petroleum from his hands with a handkerchief. He had set fire to the building in accordance with the strict principles of the social contract.
-- The Ball and the Cross, GK Chesterton
It's difficult. I would like to have their incompetence shown publicly, but I don't want anyone or anything to be damaged by their incompetence. I'm not sure what to wish for, except to wish for elections soon and to see them gone.
At the moment, I have difficulty in believing that the current Government could pour piss out of a boot with the directions written on the sole.
---
The Master evidently meant to say more, but before he could say anything M. Durand had stepped right up to him and was speaking.
He was speaking exactly as a French bourgeois speaks to the manager of a restaurant. That is, he spoke with rattling and breathless rapidity, but with no incoherence, and therefore with no emotion. It was a steady, monotonous vivacity, which came not seemingly from passion, but merely from the reason having been sent off at a gallop. He was saying something like this:
"You refuse me my half-bottle of Medoc, the drink the most wholesome and the most customary. You refuse me the company and obedience of my daughter, which Nature herself indicates. You refuse me the beef and mutton, without pretence that it is a fast of the Church. You now forbid me the promenade, a thing necessary to a person of my age. It is useless to tell me that you do all this by law. Law rests upon the social contract. If the citizen finds himself despoiled of such pleasures and powers as he would have had even in the savage state, the social contract is annulled."
"It's no good chattering away, Monsieur," said Hutton, for the Master was silent. "The place is covered with machine-guns. We've got to obey our orders, and so have you."
"The machinery is of the most perfect," assented Durand, somewhat irrelevantly; "worked by petroleum, I believe. I only ask you to admit that if such things fall below the comfort of barbarism, the social contract is annulled. It is a pretty little point of theory."
"Oh! I dare say," said Hutton.
Durand bowed quite civilly and withdrew.
[...]
Two of the three passages leading out of the hall were choked with blue smoke. Another instant and the hall was full of the fog of it, and red sparks began to swarm like scarlet bees.
"The place is on fire!" cried Quayle with a scream of indecent terror. "Oh, who can have done it? How can it have happened?"
A light had come into Turnbull's eyes. "How did the French Revolution happen?" he asked.
"Oh, how should I know!" wailed the other.
"Then I will tell you," said Turnbull; "it happened because some people fancied that a French grocer was as respectable as he looked."
Even as he spoke, as if by confirmation, old M. Durand re-entered the smoky room quite placidly, wiping the petroleum from his hands with a handkerchief. He had set fire to the building in accordance with the strict principles of the social contract.
-- The Ball and the Cross, GK Chesterton
