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The result was that on the following year his pictures were not hung at all, whereupon, after another onslaught upon them, he had declared his determination never again to submit a picture to the judgment of men whose natural stupidity was only equalled by their ignorance of art.
Observing that the conversation grew lively, she simply thought that she was not so stupid as she was, the result being that she settled down into her ignorance with some complacency; she lost her timidity, and acquired a self-possession which gave to her "speeches" something of the solemnity with which the British enunciate their patriotic absurdities, the self-conceit of stupidity, as it may be called.
The House of Commons, as the event proved, could be as subservient to the king as to his minister. Yet the design failed; and it failed because, with characteristic stupidity, the king did not know the proper instruments for his purpose. Whatever he touched he mismanaged. He aroused the suspicion of the people by enforcing the resignation of the elder Pitt.
Again and again, designs of practical airships not gas-bags which could only be dragged slowly against a moderate wind, but flying machines which conquered the wind and used it as a bird does had been submitted to the War Office during the last six or seven years, and had been pooh-poohed or pigeon-holed by some sapient permanent official and now the penalty of stupidity and neglect had to be paid.
They lounge about, do just the duty they are positively obliged to do, laugh in their sleeves if they get rowed, and swear at every short hour demanded by the service. Nothing but continuous lazing! Then in the end, every one who has not been arrested for some piece of sheer stupidity is made captain, of course always supposing he has not been positively dishonest, or done something criminal."
"Exceedingly well," said he, "as you shall see;" and off he shuffled, in that posture, amidst the unbounded laughter of the spectators. "Enough! enough!" said the president. "What we have both heard and seen goes a great way in his favour. But let us now hear what the next has to say for himself in proof of his stupidity."
Surely, the meet ardent admirer of feminine shallowness must have felt some irritation when he found himself arrested by this dead wall of stupidity, and have turned with relief to the larger intelligence of Madame de Sablé, who was not the less graceful, delicate, and feminine because she could follow a train of reasoning, or interest herself in a question of science.
And in fact the best plan is never to ask any questions whatever, not even if a man has change for a louis. Clementine was delightful at dinner. She replied wittily and gracefully to all the questions which were addressed to her. True, what she said was lost on the majority of her auditors for wit cannot stand before stupidity but I enjoyed her talk immensely.
You have commonly enough seen this provoke the grin of stupidity and folly.
“No; I didn’t know,” he declared, with a sort of flabby stupidity, whose comical aspect was lost upon a woman haunted by the fear of the gallows, “but I do now. I—I understand,” he floundered on, his mind speculating as to what sort of atrocities Verloc could have practised under the sleepy, placid appearances of his married estate.
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