Le Vicomte de Valvert: That thing of yours is big, what? Very big.
Cyrano de Bergerac: Precisely what I've been saying.
Le Vicomte de Valvert: Ah!
Cyrano de Bergerac: Nothing more? Just a fatuous smirk? Oh, come, there are fifty-score more varieties of comment you could find, if you possessed a modicum of mind. For instance there's the frank aggressive kind: "If mine achieved such a hypertrophic state, I'd call in a surgeon at once to amputate!" The friendly: "It must dip in your cup, You need a nasal crane to hoist it up." The pure descriptive: "From its size and shape, I'd say it was a rock, a bluff, a cape - No, a peninsula - how picturesque!" The curious: "What's that? A writing desk? The gracious: "Are you fond of birds? How sweet - A Gothic perch to rest their feet." The truculent: "Are you a smoker? I suppose the fumes must gush out fiercely from that nose and people think a chimney's on fire." Considerate: "It will drag you in the mire head first, the weight that's concentrated there. Walk carefully." The tender-hearted swear they'll have a miniature embrella made to keep the rain off, or for summer shade. Then comes the pedant: "Let me see it please. That mythic beast of Aristophenes, the hippocampocamelephant, had flesh and bone like that stuck up in front." Insolent: "Quite a useful gadget, that. You hold it high and then hang up your hat." Emphatic: "No fierce wind from near or far, save the Mistral, could give that nose catarrh." Impressed: "A sign for a perfumery!" Dramatic: "When it bleeds, it's the Red Sea!" Lyric: "Ah, Triton rising from the waters, honking his wretched conch at Neptune's daughters!" Naive: "How much to view the monument?" Speculative: "Tell me, what's the rent for each of both of those unfurnished flats?" Rustic: "Nay, Jarge, that ain't no nose. Why, that's a giant turnip, or a midget marrow. Let's dig it up and load it on the barrow." The warlike: "Train it on the enemy!" Pracitcal: "Put that in a lottery for noses, and it's bound to win first prize." And finally, with tragic sighs and cries, the language finely wrought and deeply felt, "Oh, that this too, too solid nose would melt." This is the sort of thing you could have said, if you, Sir Moron, were a man of letters or had an ounce of spunk inside your head. But you've no letters, have you, save the three required for self-description: S.O.T. You have to live my worsting to your betters, or better, who can best you, meaning me. But be quite sure, you lesser-feathered twit, Even if you possessed the soul and wit, I'd never let you get away with it.
