And now you are asking yourself if you were well served by the ramblings of a mad man, this leper. Do you wish me to be profound as well as profoundly bitter? Would you care to hear me beg to step out of the narrative, as you, doubtless, have stepped outside of yours?
     I could tell of free will, of god, of godlessness, I could, and it would all be trite, for I am no intellectual. I am no poet. I am barely even a leper. In truth there is no more art to make and fools can see that philosophy has become the slightest of parodies. "Gee, how you talk!" exclaimed the young man, a gleam of admiration supplanting for a moment the dull sadness of his eyes. "You've got the Astor Library skinned to a synopsis of preceding chapters. I mind that old Turk you speak of. I read 'The Arabian Nights' when I was a kid. He was a kind of Bill Devery and Charlie Schwab rolled into one. But, say, you might wave enchanted dishrags and make copper bottles smoke up coon giants all night without ever touching me. My case won't yield to that kind of treatment."
     "If I could hear your story," said the Margrave, with his lofty, serious smile.
     "I'll spiel it in about nine words," said the young man, with a deep sigh, "but I don't think you can help me any. Unless you're a peach at guessing it's back to the Bosphorous for you on your magic linoleum." THE STORY OF THE YOUNG MAN AND THE HARNESS MAKER'S RIDDLE
     Politics is portrayed as a discourse in the impossibility of politics, every book tells of the absence of literature. No one writes, no one talks, all mutter, their heads bowed down.
     And, still, something stirs. And, still, there is history. Still, an army waits in the wings. But, for me, there is no history. History is made by hoards not by lepers.
     Yet I have played my part. I am the last of the lepers. Soon the stage will be empty.