8

"It all gets into the boiling when you come to a revolution," said Chiffan. "You can't even make a garden without slinging mud. The raw material of politics. What is it? Mud, blood and fools. There's nothing else…What have you been dreaming about, Rud, if you haven't faced up to that? That's the stuff of life for our generation—leaders or led, bleeders or bled. Our feet are set on the path of revolution. The stars in their courses insist. There's no turning back. But I'll tell you, Rud, who I would rather be than any dictator that ever lived."

Rud asked "Who?" as he was plainly expected to do, though he knew nothing rational was coming.

"Omar Khayyam," said Chiffan. "Yes—old Omar. Bless him! I am a revolutionist by conviction but I am a poet by nature…That loaf of bread, that jar of wine. And the sunshine of the desert…

"As for 'Thou beside me in the wilderness' I should want an occasional change. Like the books of a circulating library. But I suppose I should begin with that girl with the neck…"

"There are times, Chiffan," interjected Rud, "when you talk like an ass, like a Priapean ass…I don't like it."

"And I have devoted myself to making a great man of you," said Chiffan with a monstrous sigh. "It's true, Rud. I've found my job in life. And when they try to shoot you—I shall be—behind you. No avoiding it. There won't be any Wilderness to go to in the Wrath to Come, and they'll have burnt the vineyards and slashed the wineskins."