16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
tions, still less with his theories of education in
Emile. So unless I was to think of him as a
hypocrite where bringing up the young was
concerned, I was compelled to regard him as
a begetter of false babies.' The ransomer merchants
at the end of the table, earthy creatures
who unlike their serious hosts had been growing
more and more restless, burst into a great
horse-laugh at the words false babies, and
clawing one another on the back they called
out, 'Hear him. Very good. Hear him.'
'Those children can perfectly well be explained
to a candid mind,' cried Dutourd over
the hubbub, 'but where there is a fixed prejudice,
an evident hatred of progress and
enlightenment, a love of privilege and outworn
custom, a denial of the essential goodness
of man, a settled malevolence, I have
nothing to say.'
Stephen bowed, and turning to the troubled