"We have now to see what will become of a fat and prosperous country with a semi-obsolete fleet and a comic opera army." "Must we talk of serious things ?" she asked softly.

"I am weary of the clanking wheels of life." He sighed.
"And yet for you," he said, "they are not grinding out the fate of your country." "Nevertheless, I too hear them all the time," she rejoined.

"And I hate them.

They make one lose one's sense of proportion.

After all, it is our own individual and internal life which counts.