This one is about the time I was an aristocrat in the revolution. They were giving me pointers on dress and decorum but I thought it would do to involve myself more actively in the cause of the penniless, even name my son Penniless, and I was wrong because one day as I was wending my way down the tortuous and ill-defined mapwise alleys of Paris a beggar approached me with his friend the other beggar and their wife the third beggar and demanded to know the god of my wealth so they could adapt themselves to its demands because at this juncture they found themselves illequipped to cope with even the simplest needs of the human frame, in which they most certainly made their lives as surely as I. I found myself cornered by more beggars until it was unmanageable and to my distress found I had to sacrifice my vows with an unsightly flourish of what I'd been trained in.
Anyhow I evolved a theory of the absolute wisdom of all the races and classes and presented it to the faculty on combined efforts of will and to my distress it was voted down for a great reward they were offering to increase the chances of solution. For by now nearly everyone was admitting his virtual dereliction in the face of the uprising which people took to calling "the heavy arousal" on account of its effectiveness. It was voted down, my theory was, and I had to retreat to the holes of my functions for the next thirty days during which I evolved a better theory involving the whole of reality in a subtle conspiracy to eliminate the grotesque. Again I was voted down but this time with winks and nods that lent credibility to my efforts which I had taken to calling fledgling. It felt like a nightmare but I was committed.
Around this time I got to feeling better about myself and ventured out alone through the dark and tired alleys of a mapwise obscure Paris. My Spaniard friend referred to my city often in his good efforts at correct pronunciation but it is a long and fierce history, Paris, that must not be simplified. I refer to my Spaniard because I was carrying his poniard and foil, having borrowed them from him at Le Ballon Invisible the night before, and that is a story in itself. So I was out with arms and soon noticed a beggar talking to me, a Sri Updike or Cheever or something, and this beggar was telling me tales of alternate byways through the difficult lines of our cases and the talk was enchanting and I turned to him and with deft eye recounted my enchantment upon which he opened up and I was full with the pleasure of my newfound friend to replace the Spaniard and I invited him to my chambers, which I have not yet described, and he accepted and we wended our equally delighted and perturbed way through an unclocked Paris.
My chambers were large for I had accumulated my many treatises and the material I had needed as background to write them. My friend removed his hat and his poniard and laid them at my feet, saying kind things about me but unkind things about my fledgling efforts simultaneously and I found to my illimitable distress that there was nothing I could do to prevent the necessity of forsaking my vows with an unsightly flourish of what I'd been trained in.
Some good arose because I was struggling with ideas of integrity and justice for quite some time and now I found my thoughts flowed freely and I suggested to the faculty a new balance to the old formulations, which to my joy I discovered needed not be discarded but could be subtly held or balanced with the average skill of a generally agile bureaucrat. This time I was rewarded with eighteen glances and three thousand four hundred louis d'or which I quietly secured in the vault of the bank belonging to my longtime friend and confidant the honorable M. Denseur Izet, who possessed a ranch and foods to refine the faculties to a metallic whine. With him I finally spent rewarding days and never found myself or my values endangered.
So that is what happened, and the rest is history. Masters, when you are growing along the paths that nature dictates do not forget to pause and look at the piddling human efforts so enthusiastically propounded to you this afternoon, and consider them as lessons. There are ways other than this, but it is important to remember certain things and when such a stricture exists the other ways are more difficult than death itself.