Bahorel's own expression is, momentarily, one almost of real offense, and almost confusion. "Would you lie to them? Would you have me lie to them? What would you have me say? The book is there; we might burn it, for show or fuel, it would still be there, and back on the shelf again before the ashes were cold, I shouldn't wonder. Our friends may read it for themselves, whatever I say. Everyone may read it, to be sure, and have their own opinion."
He puts his hand over Bossuet's and leans forward, still intent. "And if there was no book, people would still read us, and make their own opinions. That is always the way of it; people come to each other with their own stories, and look to see who fits the plot they think they know. Do you think there is a line there that someone hasn't looked at us and considered, or won't, while we're here? We are all of us applauded and damned by audiences waiting to hear us echo their script, even as we try to make our own."
"This book changes nothing of that, at least not for us; except that we might know some of the stories others tell themselves of us, to the word. Well? What of that? If there is an advantage there, it is to us, so long as we know of it. Let others laugh, or sneer, or shrink away; from the lines in a book or the lines in their head, what difference does it make?"
"And if those lines are remembered from the truth- did we not think they would be, in some way? The Victor Hugo of our world surely didn't create us; perhaps he did create this, some thirty years after our death. Perhaps it was another Hugo in a world aside from ours. The true stories endure across time; this, we know. Perhaps they endure across world. And if sometimes a writer hears the voices of his tale more clearly than others- why, is that not just what writers always say, when they are in the grip of inspiration?" He does smile, now. "As for the how of it--why if I knew the mechanism for that, the trick to pull words into true, I might have served our cause far better than I did."
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He puts his hand over Bossuet's and leans forward, still intent. "And if there was no book, people would still read us, and make their own opinions. That is always the way of it; people come to each other with their own stories, and look to see who fits the plot they think they know. Do you think there is a line there that someone hasn't looked at us and considered, or won't, while we're here? We are all of us applauded and damned by audiences waiting to hear us echo their script, even as we try to make our own."
"This book changes nothing of that, at least not for us; except that we might know some of the stories others tell themselves of us, to the word. Well? What of that? If there is an advantage there, it is to us, so long as we know of it. Let others laugh, or sneer, or shrink away; from the lines in a book or the lines in their head, what difference does it make?"
"And if those lines are remembered from the truth- did we not think they would be, in some way? The Victor Hugo of our world surely didn't create us; perhaps he did create this, some thirty years after our death. Perhaps it was another Hugo in a world aside from ours. The true stories endure across time; this, we know. Perhaps they endure across world. And if sometimes a writer hears the voices of his tale more clearly than others- why, is that not just what writers always say, when they are in the grip of inspiration?" He does smile, now. "As for the how of it--why if I knew the mechanism for that, the trick to pull words into true, I might have served our cause far better than I did."