"They say that French cleverness..." he babbled suddenly, as though in a fever...
"that's false, it always has been.

Why libel French cleverness?
It's simply Russian indolence, our degrading impotence to produce ideas, our revolting parasitism in the rank of nations.

_Ils sont tout simplement des paresseux,_ and not French cleverness.

Oh, the Russians ought to be extirpated for the good of humanity, like noxious parasites! We've been striving for something utterly, utterly different.

I can make nothing of it.