Dearest friends,
Come in, come in.
Your presence is welcome and appreciated.
What is this little corner about?
Well, do permit me to tell you a tale – it’ll only take a moment of your time.
Like many of you, in years past, I went to a reasonably respectable school. And in this school, I had reasonably respectable opinions. And I went about my reasonable and respectable business, stopping only to go to my classes a reasonable amount of the time or to eat a respectable meal at a reasonable price.
In my classes, I learned many reasonable things using the power of my reason, all in the service of giving me respectable work so that I might be a respectable fellow. I rather respected this goal, as I wished nothing more than to walk the same path my forebears had walked for a hundred generations. This was, I thought, a very reasonable wish.
Now, in this respectable school, there was a certain set of rules, rules which everyone felt reasonably reasonable. After all, they spoke of little but respect and the importance of respecting others, all of whom were, of course, also very respectable persons to begin with. And yet… something felt very faintly unreasonable about the reasonable rules. Yours truly, being a passable student as well as a strapping young lad, knew very well that curiosity killed cat and man alike. But, regardless, I decided to satisfy this urge – after all, wasn’t the university a place to slake such thirsts? A reasonable thing to think.
So I asked around. Immediately, I found someone else who agreed. While one man might easily be crazy, it was a rarer thing for two fellows to independently come to the same lunacy. A comfort indeed. This could have been the end of it.
But it wasn’t.
Nevertheless, he persisted.
I asked more people. And the more people I asked, the more it seems no one really believed the reasonable code was very reasonable at all. In this crowd of priests was not one believer, even though, being student officials, they were often the ones tasked with enforcing the reasonable code. What was merely curious now became intensely curious.
I must admit that this was the beginning of my descent into being the churlish fellow I am now.
If you value your dignity, turn back now.
Yours Unhappily,
Monsieur le Baron
