human
Gustave, said Savarin,
gpt
Serious talk from M. Savarin is a novelty too great not to command my profoundest interest.
human
Thank you,--and to begin: I who know the world and mankind advise you, who do not, never to meet a man who wishes to do you a kindness with an ungracious sarcasm. Irony is a weapon I ought to be skilled in, but weapons are used against enemies, and it is only a tyro who flourishes his rapier in the face of his friends.
gpt
I was not aware that M. Savarin still permitted me to regard him as a friend.
human
Because I discharged the duties of friend--remonstrated, advised, and warned. However, let bygones be bygones. I entreated you not to quit the safe shelter of the paternal roof. You insisted on doing so. I entreated you not to send to one of the most ferocious of the Red, or rather, the Communistic, journals, articles, very eloquent, no doubt, but which would most seriously injure you in the eyes of quiet, orderly people, and compromise your future literary career for the sake of a temporary flash in the pan during a very evanescent period of revolutionary excitement. You scorned my adjurations, but at all events you had the grace not to append your true name to those truculent effusions. In literature, if literature revive in France, we two are henceforth separated. But I do not forego the friendly interest I took in you in the days when you were so continually in my house. My wife, who liked you so cordially, implored me to look after you during her absence from Paris, and, _enfin, mon pauvre garcon_, it would grieve me very much if, when she comes back, I had to say to her, 'Gustave Rameau has thrown away the chance of redemption and of happiness which you deemed was secure to him.' _A l'oeil malade, la lumiere nuit_.