'Sure, I have often heard the remark in Ballinasloe,' said Maturin. 'But I have no patience with Emmanuel Kant. Ever since I found him take such notice of that thief Rousseau, I have had no patience with him at all -for a philosopher to countenance that false ranting dog of a Swiss raparee shows either a criminal levity or a no less criminal gullibility. Gushing, carefully-calculated tears, false confidences, untrue confessions, enthusiasm -romantic vistas.' His hand moved of itself to his cigar-case and came away disappointed. 'How I hate enthusiasm and romantic vistas," he said.
'Davy Hume was of your opinion,' said Graham. 'I mean with regard to Monsieur Rousseau. He found him to be little more than a crackit gaberlunzie.'
'But at least Rousseau did not make a noise,' said Maturin, looking angrily at his friends in the farther bower. 'Jean-Jacques Rousseau may have been an apostate, a cold-hearted prevaricating fornicator, but he did not behave like a Bashan bull when he was merry. Will you look how they call out to those young women now, for shame?'
The young women, who nightly capered on the stage or lent their voices to the chorus, and who often accompanied the younger officers on their boating picnics to Gozo or Camino or their expeditions to what meagre groves the island had to offer, did not seem outraged: they called back and laughed and waved, and one of them, coming up the steps, poised herself for a moment on the arm of Captain Pellew's chair, drank off his glass of wine, and told them they must all come to the opera on Saturday; she was to sing the part of the fifth gardener. At this Captain Aubrey made some amazingly witty remark: it was lost to Maturin, but the roar of laughter that followed must certainly have been heard in St Angelo.
'Jesus, Mary and Joseph,' said Maturin. 'In Ireland I have known many a numerous gathering rejoice at little more than a genteel murmur; and it is to be supposed that the same applies to Scotland.'
Graham could suppose no such thing, but he was benevolently inclined towards Maturin and he said^no more than 'Heuch: ablins.'
'Some of my best friends are Englishmen,' continued Maturin. 'Yet even the most valuable have this same vicious inclination to make a confused bellowing when they are happy. It is harmless enough in their own country, where the diet deadens the sensibilities, but it travels badly: it is perceived as a superabundancy of arrogance, and is resented more than many worse crimes. The Spaniard is a vile colonist, murderous, rapacious, cruel; but he is not heard to laugh. His arrogance is of a common, universal kind, and his presence is not resented in the same way as the Englishman's. Take the case of this island alone: it is scarcely a decade since the Navy rescued the people from the horrible tyranny of the French and filled the place with wealth rather than carrying away the treasures of the churches by the shipload, but already there is a great and growing discontent and I believe the laughter has much to do with it. Though there is enough plain stupid arrogance to account for much of it, for all love. Will you look at this, now?'
Graham took the paper, held it at arm's length, and read 'The King's Civil Commissioner observes with regret that some weak and inconsiderate persons, deceived under specious pretexts, have suffered themselves to become the instruments of a few turbulent and factious individuals. They have been seduced to subscribe a paper purporting to be an application to the King for certain changes in the existing form of government of these islands."
'There is Sir Hildebrand's style in all its shining perfection,' said Maturin. 'Ebenezer Graham, you have his ear: could you not advise him to forget his pomp, his righteous indignation, for a moment and reflect upon the immense importance of Maltese good will? Could you not persuade him to address them with common civility and in their own language, or at least in Italian? Could you not . . . what is it, child?' he said, breaking off to attend to a little boy who had slipped through the greenery and who was standing at his side, smiling shyly, waiting to say that his sister - fifteen years of age, no more, my lord - was kind to English gentlemen: her fees were astonishingly moderate, and full satisfaction was guaranteed.
It was not much of an interruption, but it broke Maturin's flow of speech, and when the boy had gone Graham observed, 'For your part, you have Captain Aubrey's ear. Could you not advise him to avoid Mr Holden's company, rather than hail him in that public manner?'
Mr Holden had been dismissed the service for using his ship to protect some Greeks fleeing from a Turkish punitive expedition: he was now acting for a small, remote, ineffectual and premature Committee for Greek Independence, and since the English government had to keep on terms with the Sublime Porte he was a most unwelcome visitor to official Malta.
The advice, of course, was far too late. Holden was already sitting at his old shipmate's table, one hand holding a glass of wine, the other stretched out, pointing at a singularly magnificent diamond spray in Jack Aubrey's hat. 'What, what is that?' he cried.
'It is a chelengk,' said Jack with some complacency. 'Ain't I elegant?'
'Wind it up again. Wind it up for him,' said his friends, and the Captain set his hat, his best, gold-laced, number one full-dress scraper, on the table: the splendid bauble - two close-packed lines of small diamonds, each topped by a respectable stone and each four or five inches long - had a round, diamond-studded base; this he twisted anti-clockwise for several turns, and as he put on his hat again the chelengk sprang into motion, the round turning with a gentle whirr and the sprays quivering with a life of their own, so that Captain Aubrey sat in a small private coruscation, a confidential prismatic firework display, astonishingly brilliant in the sun.
'Where, where did he get it?' cried Holden, turning to the others, as though Captain Aubrey might not be addressed while the chelengk blazed and trembled.
Did Holden not know? - Why, from the Grand Signior, of course, the Sultan of Turkey - For taking the rebellious Torgud and her consort - Where had Holden been, not to have heard of the action between the Surprise and the Torgud, the neatest action this last age?
'I knew the Torgud, of course,' said Holden. 'She carried very heavy metal, and she was commanded by that murderous bloody-minded dog Mustapha Bey. Pray, Jack, how did you set about her?'
'Well, we were just opening the Corfu channel, do you see, with a steady topgallant breeze at south-east,' said Jack. 'And the ships lay thus . . .'
In the quieter, more philosophic bower Dr Maturin, sitting with his legs crossed and his breeches unbuckled at the knee, felt a slight movement upon his calf, as of an insect or the like: instinctively he raised his hand, but years of natural philosophy, of a desire to know just what the creature was, and a wish to spare the honey-bee or the innocent resting moth - delayed the stroke. He had often paid for his knowledge in the past, and now he paid for it again: he had scarcely recognized the great twelve-spotted Maltese horse-fly before it thrust its proboscis deep into his flesh. He struck, crushed the brute, and sat watching the blood spread on his white silk stocking, his lips moving in silent rage.
Graham said, 'You were speaking of your freedom from tobacco: but should we not consider a determination not to smoke as an even greater deprivation of liberty ? As an abolition of the right of present choice, which is freedom's very essence? Should not a wise man feel himself free to smoke tobacco or not to smoke tobacco, as the occasion requires? We are social animals; but by ill-timed austerities, that lead to moroseness, we may be led to forget our social duties, and so loosen the bonds of society.'
'I am sure that you mean kindly in speaking so,' said Maturin. 'Yet you must allow me to say that I wonder at it - I wonder that a man of your parts should believe in a simple, single cause for so complex an effect as a state of mind. Is it conceivable that mere absence of tobacco alone could make me testy? No, no: in psychology as in history we must look for multiple causality. I shall smoke a small cigar, or part of a small cigar, out of compliment to you; but you will see that the difference, if it exists at all, is very slight. Indeed, the springs of mood are wonderfully obscure, and sometimes I am astonished at what I find welling up from them - at the thoughts and attitudes that present themselves, fully formed, before the mental eye.'