Conversing over hot wine and a distinct lack of TOTAL IMMERSION IN ICE WATER thanks

[pro_patria_mortuus]

(From here)

Enjolras and Joly head indoors, with all the due speed. Which in Joly's case is a fair amount of speed, what with the shivering and the clutching a borrowed coat around himself and the wet hair and the swearing laughingly under his breath every time the wind picks up a little, and Enjolras keeps pace.

Indoors it's bright -- and far warmer. And Cesario, as promised, has scrounged up a table and hot wine.

Comments

[pro_patria_mortuus]

"That makes sense," Enjolras agrees -- sincerely, because if you want someone who will sustain teasing rather than being diverted into earnest listening, Enjolras is not your man.

"It does seem invigorating. I don't say enjoyable precisely, though Bahorel seemed to be having fun." But, you know, Bahorel. "But I can see how it might be useful in certain circumstances."

Science! Medicine! Helping people! Medicine contains a lot weirder-seeming stuff, even if you stick to the future medicine instead of the best-guess misconceptions of their era.

[livinginmyglass]

"Then I am glad indeed you have so profited by your soaking," Viola says. "And I, too, have profited-- for I have gained a certain knowledge that Frenchmen must be mad."

[merryeccentricities]

It's a really good thing Joly already swallowed his wine. He bursts into happy, surprised laughter. "Oh, not all, not all at all!" He manages, as he catches his breath. "Not even everyone at this table--and then ,you know, even I have been accused of certain leanings towards sanity and reason." he takes another sip of wine, still grinning hugely. "--Mostly by the fellow still swimming in the lake, I grant you, but that's something."

Come on, Enjolras! You're more or less sensible and soberish! Stand up for the sanity of Frenchmen! Or. Not.

[pro_patria_mortuus]

Enjolras, too, breathes out a light breath of his own version of laughter.

"Only a few of us. I believe that if you ask Bahorel he'll mount a spirited defense of madness and art, but I could not hope to replicate it."

Also, it probably wouldn't convince anyone that all Frenchmen aren't mad.

"But I would say instead that the pursuit of knowledge and progress can lead a perfectly sane man, through a deeper devotion to reason, to ask questions of accepted wisdom that may seem mad at first." He's earnest as he says this, and intensely sincere. "How else are new discoveries made?"

"Although," he adds, with a brief return of the friendly wryness, "I'll still leave the winter swimming to you."

[livinginmyglass]

Viola feels a bit bad-- her joke sounds rather glib when followed by a response like that.

"I am no artist, nor a scholar," she says. "And so I shall trust to your words, and speak no more of what I do not know."

[merryeccentricities]

Yeah! What Enjolras said! Joly would totally have said that--or something much like it-- and has, on occasions when he wasn't shivering so much. But he can still beam in approval!

--And laugh at the last comment. "Well, as for that--I have learned since coming here that much I was taught as sanest sense was dangerously wrong, and much that men in our time laughed at was the simplest truth; so I find it harder now to rule anything out!"

But Cesario's looking a little overwhelmed, for some mysterious totally baffling unfamiliar reason. A slight change of subject, maybe? "--Are the people of Illyria all good sober sane men, like you?"

...It's a joke, a joke. He's not accusing you of being serious and grim for real! Obviously!

[livinginmyglass]

"O, indeed," Viola replies solemnly. "Every one as true a man as I."

[pro_patria_mortuus]

...It's a slightly odd response, like a joke he isn't quite following the track of. Maybe there's some kind of pun that doesn't translate from whatever she's speaking? (Illyrian?) That seems the likeliest.

"I'm afraid I know nothing of Illyria."

Did it ever exist in their world? Does it (or should it) still? He doesn't know. He'll ask Feuilly.

The implied question -- what's it like? -- is a sincere one, but all the same, he'll follow the conversational redirection, and add, with a certain humor: "So if you say that every Illyrian man is sober and wise, how can we gainsay it?"

[livinginmyglass]

"In truth, monsieur, it is a country new to me," Viola replies. "I have lived there but two months, or some weeks more. Why, it may yet be that my now sure impressions of the place will yet be proven folly!"

[merryeccentricities]

"Oh! I didn't know. Where did you travel from? Is Illyria very different to it?" Joly looks about the Bar, and laughs. "Well, relatively?"

[livinginmyglass]

She laughs as well. "My home was Messaline. The two are not so unlike-- both small and ordinary places, sea ports with much in the way of trade. But Paris! That is a place I have longed to see."

[pro_patria_mortuus]

Oh look you've found another one of Enjolras's favorite topics!

And now she can see what it looks like under proper lighting, instead of moonlight, when his face lights up with fervent and glowing affection.

"No place is ordinary to its citizens who love it," he objects mildly, before moving on to the more important matter. "But there's nowhere like Paris."

The fact that he hasn't visited any potential contenders does not in the least lessen his total conviction on this matter.

"I hope for your sake that you get a chance to see France, and Paris."