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"You are doubtless aware, my dear friend," replied Trublet, "what Cyrano's bird said on this very subject. One day Cyrano de Bergerac heard two birds conversing in a tree. One of them said, 'The souls of birds are immortal, 'There can be no doubt of it, replied the other.
With Gulliver it is different. It would be a most preternatural child or a most singularly constituted adult who could read Utopia or Oceana, or even Cyrano's Voyages, "for the story" and enjoy them hugely.
Then the joke came out. He had spotted a German working party, his guns had concentrated on it, and afterwards he had seen the stretchers go forward. A grim joke, it may seem. But the French see this war from a different angle to us. If we had the Boche sitting on our heads for two years, and were not yet quite sure whether we could ever get him off again, we should get Cyrano's point of view.
'It was a book, indeed, says Cyrano, 'but a strange and wonderful book, which had neither leaves nor letters, and which instructed the Youth in their walks, so that they knew more than the Greybeards of Cyrano's country, and need never lack the company of all the great men living or dead to entertain them with living voices.
He settled deeper in his chair and, more to the sky than to Jasper Ewold, repeated Cyrano's address to his cadets, set to a tune of his own. His body might be in the chair, with a bandaged leg, but clearly his mind was away on the trail. "Yes, let me see," he said, coming back to earth. "I should like the 'Road to Rome, something of Charles Lamb, Aldrich's 'Story of a Bad Boy, Heine -but no!
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