Vol. 16 No. 2 1949 - page 169

OUR LAST POET
say more. At that very moment, the whole western sky was filled
with the infinite shades of pink and red, gold, blue, and purple, and,
suddenly inspired, De Parter had done a very strange thing. Standing
silent through the most intense period of coloration, he had then
advanced a step in the direction of the two pursuers, and had
stretched out both his hands
towards them.
"Brothers!" he had said,
his
voice loud and saturated with emo–
tion, "Brothers, understand me. I am speaking directly to you." He
had then made a passionate appeal to them, which they had not at–
tempted to write down, having put up their pencils as soon as his
talk had become personal. The conclusion had been perfectly plain:
that he wished them to join
him,
"unite with" him, against J.F.
"No!" they had both shouted in chorus, "Not against J.F.!"
De Parter, now thoroughly excited, and clearly angered by their
refusal, had himself shouted in reply to their loyalty that "J.F. is an
ogre, and his employees are his victims!"
The wild accusation apparently had not affected the two listen–
ers in the slightest, for they had remained silent. Mter a full minute
of anxious waiting, De Parter had determined to ask a final ques–
tion of them. By this time the sun had gone, and there had been
nothing but a few black, ragged clouds left .as remnants of the brilliant
display. De Parter had been burned out too, for
his
last question had
been spoken in a tone of hopelessness.
"Do
you
believe I'm a lunatic?"
"We can't answer directly, because the question is framed in
tenns of belief, about which we have no certain information. Never–
theless, by process of deduction from your extraordinary words and
actions, and in view of our own belief that J.F. thinks you are a
lunatic, we incline towards that conclusion ourselves. Do you want
us
to tell you the various steps in our logical deduction?"
This combination of answer and question had been spoken
slowly, and after another period of apparent deliberation, so, when
the little man had come to the end, it was quite dark. De Parter had
then quickly answered "No," and had ended the colloquy by stepping
down the far side of the knoll. Walking briskly across the desert in the
general direction of the mountains, he had soon snapped on
his
flashlight, an action imitated at once by the pursuers.
169
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