Do you suppose it amuses me to tell you this tale?
Or that if it were not for Nino's good name I would ever have turned myself into a common storyteller?
Bah! you do not know me.

A page of quaternions gives me more pleasure than all this rubbish put together, though I am not averse to a little gossip now and then of an evening, if people will listen to my details and fancies.

But those are just the things people will not listen to.

Everybody wants sensation nowadays.

What is a sensation compared with a thought?
What is the convulsive gesticulation of a dead frog's leg compared with the intellect of the man who invented the galvanic battery, and thus gave fictitious sensation to all the countless generations of dead frogs' legs that have since been the objects of experiment?
Or if you come down to so poor a thing as mere feeling, what are your feelings in reading about Nino's deeds compared with what he felt in doing them?
I am not taking all this trouble to please you, but only for Nino's sake, who is my dear boy.