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ears cannot hear. Zaraat with everything, a step away; exit without motive, without logic. Strong, unashamed of her putrefaction in the glaciered sunlight. »
    « New Cicero, » went the snide, admiring murmurs.
    The orator continued:
    « And, of course, before me the victim, a woman with a voice still beautiful, who Zaraat felt the need to respect. A poor, hardworking woman, mother of many small children. It was already a heavily burdensome process, and she, fooled, knew nothing about it until the end. The woman relived her long days of misery, counting them and arriving at no end: a burden and a societal travesty, with one exception to my benefit: I can bring her to the attention of all of you. Sad, tearful, the woman ignored her link with Zaraat. Secundina Llopart consoled her effusively, physically. If only she were to have translated the name! The secret, so close to tumbling from the throat: count, here, Zaraat. What a leap Secundina would have taken! What would she have made with her effusive, physical, noisy compassion? The scream, a mouth, Zaraat. But also lonely, unfortunate, tearful, sad, human. »
    « So, you didn ’ t reveal the secret? » someone asked.
    « No, I preferred to extend a hand to Zaraat, » responded Miravitlles. « I extended a hand to her even though I remembered the words of Joinville. Heroism, self-control, literature? Whatever it is that is wanted, may it serve me, “ while the hour to praise Santa Maria comes to me, ” to even out the balance of so very many shortcomings. Meanwhile, I did not stop washing myself for two days, until I began to chafe, the palm of my hand infected. »
    « Of course, the soap! » pondered a few of the unconditionally conscientious.
    « You exaggerate, you dramatize, » Doctor Robuster i Tramusset — licensed only in medicine and introduced unexpectedly — said, letting the air out of the room. « The danger of contagion from the authentic Zaraat (because you can ’ t forget that it is a rather imprecise and ambiguous word and, moreover, rather difficult to transcribe with adequate diacritics) has been during all epochs very relative. On the other hand, you can certainly believe it to be a problem now practically solved. With diaminodiphenylsulfone or any equivalent substance. The medication must be ordered, as is notoriously the case, with extreme prudence. »
    « And it is administered if there are sharp reactions, or, in isolated cases, corticoids, » answered the modest and encyclopedic Miravitlles. « I give it to you that the latest techniques have entirely changed the subject. But my anecdote is from quite a few years ago, though it would be no pleasure to be cornered by Zaraat even today, » he added with model level-headedness, as the entertainingly vengeful and ignorant debaters, all laboratory propaganda shut out of the honorable and short controversy, realized with cruel clarity that the developing story had ended on the tail of a fish.
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    5 Jean de Joinville (1224 – 1317): French writer and chronicler.

Magnolias in the Cloister
    Revised, to Joan Triad ú .
    « You ’ re in the cloister, » I said to my skeleton, « and you ’ re not saluting the presence and the miracle of the magnolias? » « Lyrics now? I ’ m tired, sit down, » my skeleton commanded. « Not even you can free me from impending death? » I queried the trees. « Must I always feel a slave to these abominable bones? » « Ai, poor, poor us! » responded the flowering magnolias. « We can ’ t help you, a curse bewitches us, we dare not move. Don ’ t you see how the young palm envies us? » And they shook their ultra-green foliage as proof of their useless tenderness. « The young palm doesn ’ t like me, » I said. « It will never fail to reach the bell tower and the old bells. You would end up missing those peaks tremendously, » I said to the yellow palm. « I don ’ t know why you insist upon continuing bowed in the stifling cloister. Every morning, at dawn, the