What useless pageantry! No party ever believes in converting their opponent: neither liberty capitulating nor power abasing itself ever obtains mercy… - François-Auguste-René de Chateaubriand

"Sincero y veraz como soy, me es imposible abrir mi corazón: mi alma tiende sin cesar a cerrarse; nunca lo digo todo y solamente he confesado mi vida entera en estas Memorias. No hablo nunca con nadie "de paso" de mis intereses, de mis intenciones, de mis trabajos, de mis ideas, de mis afectos de mis alegrías, de mis tristezas, pues estoy convencido del profundo tedio que se causa a los demás hablándoles de uno mismo."

Men of the trident have some games handed down to them by their ancestors: when you cross the Line, you must be “baptized.” The same ceremony takes place in the Tropics as on the banks of Newfoundland, and, whatever the locale, the leader of the masquerade is always “the Old Man of the Tropics.” Tropical and dropsical are synonymous to sailors: the Old Man of the Tropics therefore has an enormous paunch. Even under the tropical sun, he is outfitted in all the sheepskins and fur coats that the crew can find. He sits crouching on the maintop, bellowing from time to time like a wild animal. Everyone stares up at him. Then he starts climbing down the shrouds, heavy as a bear and staggering like Silenus. When he lands on deck, he roars some more, leaps, seizes a pail, fills it with water from the sea, and pours it over the head of anyone who has never crossed the Line or reached the icy latitude. You may flee below deck, leap onto the hatches, or shinny up the masts, but Old Man Tropic is always after you. It all ends with the sailors getting a large sum of drink money.

I can understand the cruel gaiety of Cervantes’s masterpiece only through a melancholy meditation: considering the whole of human existence, weighing good and evil, one might be tempted to wish for any accident that brings forgetfulness, as a means of escaping from oneself.