The Unexpected Encounter

I beg your pardon, I do not understand anything you are saying.

What! You do not understand me?

No, by God.

Neither do I. It is an old song composed by Mahomet Referring to the Prophet Muhammad; used here in the context of the fictionalized, stylized orientalism of the 18th-century stage. in the obscure style of the Alcoran Koran; we, the Calenders, sing it when we go to ask for charity.

What! Is it to ask for charity? I was about to ask you for it myself.

Ask for charity! Are you then completely penniless?

So penniless that I have nothing to eat; but I am not prouder than you, & I hope that by holding out my hand, I will soon have earned something to put under my tooth. In a city as populated as this one, beggars must easily find subsistence.

So you do not know how to do anything?

Oh! yes I do! I can drink & eat for four.

That is something; it seems to me that you do not breed melancholy.

It would be better, my faith, to be a beggar & have sorrow into the bargain; oh! nature is wiser than that; she has placed gaiety right next to misery. I defy all the Sultans of the world to be in as good a humor as I am.

Are you in love?

Heaven keep me from it; I love women, but I am not in love with any of them.

Those are many qualities. Very gluttonous, no love,