.._"
... And the Zulu came out of _la commission_ with identically the
expressionless expression which he had carried into it; and God knows
what The Three Wise Men found out about him, but (whatever it was) they
never found and never will find that Something whose discovery was worth
to me more than all the round and powerless money of the world--limbs'
tin grace, wooden wink, shoulderless, unhurried body, velocity of a
grasshopper, soul up under his arm-pits, mysteriously falling over the
ownness of two feet, floating fish of his slimness half a bird....
Gentlemen, I am inexorably grateful for the gift of these ignorant and
indivisible things.
X
SURPLICE
Let us ascend the third Delectable Mountain, which is called Surplice.
I will admit, in the beginning, that I never knew Surplice. This for the
simple reason that I am unwilling to know except as a last resource. And
it is by contrast with Harree The Hollander, whom I knew, and Judas, whom
I knew, that I shall be able to give you (perhaps) a little of Surplice,
whom I did not know. For that matter, I think Monsieur Auguste was the
only person who might possibly have known him; and I doubt whether
Monsieur Auguste was capable of descending to such depths in the case of
so fine a person as Surplice.
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