THE BLANKET: Sir, it is I, your pupil, Rameau's niece.
She uncovered herself and, in spite of my anger and disappointment and general misery, the sight of her, so close to me, so disheveled among the folds of the blanket, caused a stirring of intellectual interest that I had thought I should never experience again. She brushed her hair from her flushed face, and her eyes, always bright, seemed to be lit with a new fire; her lips, so sweet to my memory, looked sweeter still than ever I had seen them.
SHE: Do not be angry with me, sir. I could not bear it.
MYSELF: You must not be here. If anyone should find out—
SHE: What care I for the opinion of anyone else when the opinion of the one who has taught me what opinion means is turned against me? What does it matter if every face turns away from me, if only this one dear face would turn back and let me gaze upon it?
As she spoke, her little hand gripped mine with surprising strength. Tears fell from her eyes, wetting her smooth cheeks.
MYSELF: You seem to have enjoyed the gaze of others, one other, at least, with rare enthusiasm. Can the removal of mine really cause you such pain?
SHE: Can you look at me as I am now and ask that question? Is not my distress only too apparent? Have I not risked much to come to you, to be with you, to beg you?
MYSELF: Beg me? And for what do you beg?
SHE: For understanding.
MYSELF: That is all I have ever sought.
I said as much, and as I said it, my anger turned to tears, and my face, far from turning away from my pupil, pressed against her own delicate face, our tears mingling.
SHE: Understand me!
MYSELF: All I have ever wanted is to understand you.
SHE: Understand me here.
MYSELF: Here?
SHE: Now.
MYSELF: Now?
She had thrown the blanket to the floor, and, although the carriage was not ideal for a discussion of this nature, the urgency of the situation required that we make do as best we could under difficult circumstances.
Wherever the repetition of any particular act or operation produces a propensity to renew the same act or operation, without being impelled by any reasoning or process of the understanding, we always say that this propensity is the effect of custom. And so custom dictated that we renew an act, an operation dear to us both, and so we were impelled to begin, and so began with joyous familiarity the act.
MYSELF: There are two ways of investigating and discovering truth.
SHE: I urge you to demonstrate them to me with the full weight of your considerable intellect. MYSELF: The one way hurries on rapidly, leaping from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms. This is the one now in use.
SHE: Yes, that is so.
MYSELF: It is not a satisfactory method.
SHE: No, as I discovered when I sought truth with another, less learned guide.
MYSELF: The other method, my method, constructs its axioms from the senses and particulars by ascending continually...
My pupil was agreeing with my proposition in a most enthusiastic way, which, while gratifying, was somewhat alarming considering our position, that is traveling in a carriage on the public highway.
MYSELF: Continually and gradually...
The noise of our discussion was quite audible, and, fearing discovery, I urged discretion by placing my hand across her little mouth, an act that seemed only to intensify her excitement at our endeavor, for she continued her unmistakable sounds, and her breath on my hand was hot and quick.
MYSELF: Ascending continually and gradually till it finally arrives at the most general axioms.
Only then did we both sink back with a sigh. In the carriage, there was tranquillity.
SHE: Did you arrive?
MYSELF: Did you?
SHE: As a being endowed with sensation, you must know the answer to that question.
After some time and some miles, I addressed my pupil, for she was once again my pupil.
MYSELF: Can you tell me what the existence of a being endowed with sensation means to that being itself?
SHE: It must mean the awareness of having been itself from the first instant of consciousness down to the present moment.
MYSELF: And this awareness is grounded in the memory of its own actions.
SHE: Alas, I should like to forget some of my own actions, that is, those actions that have caused you so much pain and me so little satisfaction.
MYSELF: But if there were no memory, there would be no awareness of self, because if a creature were aware of its existence only during the instant of that awareness, it would have no history of its life.
I looked at Rameau's niece, her dark auburn hair falling over her neck, creating a pleasing distinction of color from the paleness of her tender skin. The strings of her petticoat lay loose, the petticoat itself lifted up, together with her shift, navel high, and I slipped them higher yet,