At the end of a year the gentleman packed his bags and said to us, 'My friends, I have learned my lesson, and I'm returning to the city. But if you ever see another one like me heading this way, tell him from me that there are three ways of ruining yourself: women, gambling, and agriculture. Agriculture is the quickest, and moreover the least enjoyable! Farewell!' And he was gone.
Au bout d'un an, le monsieur a plié bagages, et il nous a dit: «Mes amis, j'ai compris, et je retourne en ville. Mais si vous en voyez venir un autre comme moi, dites-lui de ma part qu'il y a trois façons de se ruiner: les femmes, le jeu, et l'agriculture. L'agriculture c'est le plus rapide, et, en plus, le moins agréable! Adessias!» Et il est parti.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Monday, April 28, 2014
Three Ways of Ruining Yourself
Marcel Pagnol (1895-1974), Jean de Florette, chapter 12 (tr. W.E. van Heyningen):