I should have gone about the world, a modern Admetus, snivelling at my accursed luck, without even the chance of persuading a soft-hearted Alcestis to die for me.

I should have been a dismal nuisance to society.
"Bless you," I cried this afternoon, waving, as I leaned against a post, my hand to the ambient mud, "Renniker was wrong! You are not a God-forsaken place.

You are impregnated with divine inspiration." A muddy man in a blue jersey and filthy beard who occupied the next post looked at me and spat contemptuously.

I laughed.
"If you were Marcus Aurelius," said I, "I would make a joke--a short life and an eumoiry one--and he would have looked as pained as you." "What ?" he bawled.

He was to windward of me.
I knew that if I repeated my observation he would offer to fight me.