The Catalans: A Novel by Patrick O'Brian Page A

think of it at all; but I think their guiding motive is curiosity rather than humanity. And I know that with regard to their fellow men as individuals they are neither much better nor much worse than the rest of the world: they certainly do not conspicuously overflow with love for their neighbors or their colleagues. And I am sure of this, that the popular idea of bacteriologists as wise white-coated angels yearning day and night is so much nonsense: many of them are disagreeable men, some not even of average intelligence. And any bacteriologist who gives countenance to this ‘dedicated servant’ notion is guilty of abominable cant. I hate cant.”
    “Yes. But cant and sentimentality aside, I still envy you. Compare medicine with the law. In spite of everything that can be said against doctors, nobody has ever felt called upon to elaborate any long, sophistical argument to prove that medicine is an honorable calling: nor do they trouble to show that rich men have a better time than poor men. But it has been demonstrated over and over again, logically and conclusively, that the lawyer is all that is admirable and that poverty is in every way preferable to wealth. Yet the world’s mind is unaltered: men still flee poverty and loathe lawyers.”
    “The concept of justice is very noble, surely?”
    “Justice? Oh yes. The concept of cleanliness is very fine, too; but we do not cherish the emptiers of dustbins or the men who look after the sewers.”
    “You are determined to think ill of your trade, I find.”
    “Yes. It is a dirty, dirty business. I have never known anyone come in contact with the law, as winner, loser, or lawyer without taking some of the taint of it.”
    If I had studied psychology instead of bacteria, thought Alain, I might know what all this portends: if anyone had attacked the law on my last leave Xavier would have downed him with three or four sharp arguments and a dozen quotations: he would have been out of the house in a very short time, and he would never have been allowed in again.
    Xavier was in a high, mounting state of nervous tension: all the time Alain had been talking he had noticed the end of Xavier’s cigar glowing with his continual, restless drawing on it. Now the stump curved away in a long comet-flight that ended in a burst of sparks on the lower terrace, and at once Xavier lit another.
    In the flare of the match his face stood out in exaggerated light and shade, gaunt, cadaverous, desperately unhappy.
    “I’ll tell you what it is, Alain,” he said, in an odd, continuing voice, as if he had been speaking for some time. “Every day I see damnation just in front of me, and it terrifies me.”
    He was silent, and Alain, with the shock of surprise and embarrassment, could make no comment. This was delicate: but his continuing silence might have the air of repulsive, cold indifference—disinclination to speak so intimately. In a neutral voice he repeated the word damnation.
    “Yes. Damnation.”
    “What do you mean by it?”
    “Every sort of damnation. The devils-with-pitchforks damnation, the fiery hell, the icy hell, the silent hell of darkness and expectation, a waiting horror: everything. But specifically for me a kind of living death; damnation on two legs. Look here, Alain—” he was leaning forward in the urgency of his speech; Alain could feel his nearness—“do you know what I mean by the death of the soul?”
    “No.”
    “I will tell you what I mean by the death of the soul. When you no longer have the power to love, when there is no stir of affection anywhere in your being, then your soul is dead. That is the death of your soul. Your soul is dead, and you are damned: you are dead walking, and you are in hell in your own body.”
    By day, in other surroundings, Alain might have discounted these big words: here, with the night around him, they moved him inexpressibly.
    “What you say troubles me very much, Xavier,” he said, after a long pause.
    “Does it? It is a