III
We saw more dead people than living; and the dead were calm; they did not know what had happened to them, and they were calm. But what about the living? Just think what a ridiculous thing was told us by a madman for whom, too, in those days of stern equality the door had opened!
Do you think he was amazed? He looked on attentively and benignly, and the grey stubble on his yellow face bristled with proud joy—as though he had done it all himself. I do not like madmen, and was going to walk past him, but Pascale, the professor, stopped me, and respectfully asked the proud madman:
“What makes you so pleased, signor?”
Pascale was far from being short of stature, but the madman searched for him a long time with his eyes, like for a grain of sand that has suddenly spoken out aloud from amidst of a sand heap, and finally he discovered him. And hardly parting his lips—so proud was he—he repeated the question:
“What makes me so pleased?”
And he waved his hand majestically and said:
“This is perfect order. We have so long craved for order.”
He called that order! I laughed out aloud, but just at that moment a corpulent and altogether insane monk came up, and proved even more ridiculous.