It
is better to be Yoshida and perish, than to be only Sakuma
and yet save the hide. Kusakabe, of Satzuma, has said the
word: it is better to be a crystal and be broken.
I must add a word; for I hope the reader will not fail to
perceive that this is as much the story of a heroic people as
that of a heroic man. It is not enough to remember Yoshida;
we must not forget the common soldier, nor Kusakabe, nor the
boy of eighteen, Nomura, of Choshu, whose eagerness betrayed
the plot. It is exhilarating to have lived in the same days
with these great-hearted gentlemen. Only a few miles from
us, to speak by the proportion of the universe, while I was
droning over my lessons, Yoshida was goading himself to be
wakeful with the stings of the mosquito; and while you were
grudging a penny income tax, Kusakabe was stepping to death
with a noble sentence on his lips.
CHAPTER VI - FRANCOIS VILLON, STUDENT, POET, AND HOUSEBREAKER
PERHAPS one of the most curious revolutions in literary
history is the sudden bull's-eye light cast by M. Longnon on
the obscure existence of Francois Villon. (1) His book is
not remarkable merely as a chapter of biography exhumed after
four centuries. To readers of the poet it will recall, with
a flavour of satire, that characteristic passage in which he
bequeaths his spectacles - with a humorous reservation of the
case - to the hospital for blind paupers known as the
Fifteen-Score.
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