31
" BAZILE. Slander, peculiar? You don’t know what the word means if you can dismiss it so easily! I have seen the most decent, honest men brought virtually to their knees by it. Believe me, there’s no downright lie, no tissue of horrors, no tittle-tattle so absurd that you can’t get the crass, nosy population of any city to swallow if you set about it the right way, and here in Seville we have experts! It starts as a faint whisper, skimming the ground like a swallow before the storm, pianissimo. It whirrs and scatters, and as it spreads it shoots out poisoned barbs. A mouth catches one and, piano, piano, hooks it deftly into a convenient ear. The damage is done. It breeds, creeps, multiplies and, rinforzando, it hops like some fiend from mouth to mouth. Then suddenly, don’t ask me how, you see Slander rear up, hissing, bulging, swelling as you watch. It takes flight, spreads its wings, swoops, swirls, enfolds, claws, seizes, erupts, and explodes and turns, God only knows how, into a general clamour, a public crescendo, a universal chorus of hate and condemnation. Is there a man alive who can survive it? "
― Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais
32
" COUNT. What’s to stop you taking her with you to London?
FIGARO. A man who was married and had to be away so much? I’d never hear the end of it.
COUNT. But with your qualities and brains you could climb the ladder and end up with an important government post one of these days.
FIGARO. Brains? Climb the ladder? Your Lordship must think I’m stupid. Second-rate and grovelling, that’s the thing to be, and then the world’s your oyster.
COUNT. All you’d have to do is take a few lessons in politics from me.
FIGARO. I know what politics is.
COUNT. Like you know the key to the English language?
FIGARO. Not that it’s anything to boast about. It means pretending you don’t know what you do know and knowing what you don’t, listening to what you don’t understand and not hearing what you do, and especially, claiming you can do more than you have the ability to deliver. More often that not, it means making a great secret of the fact that there are no secrets; locking yourself in your inner sanctum where you sharpen pens and give the impression of being profound and wise, whereas you are, as they say, hollow and shallow; playing a role well or badly; sending spies everywhere and rewarding the traitors; tampering with seals, intercepting letters, and trying to dignify your sordid means by stressing your glorious ends. That’s all there is to politics, and you can have me shot if it’s not.
COUNT. But what you’ve defined is intrigue.
FIGARO. Call it politics, intrigue, whatever you want. But since to me the two things are as alike as peas in a pod, I say good luck to whoever has anything to do with either. ‘Truly, I love my sweetheart more’, as old King Henry’s song goes. "
― Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais , The Barber of Seville / The Marriage of Figaro / The Guilty Mother
