It is a ram battering a wall
at its own pleasure. Moreover, the battering-ram is iron, the wall is
wood. It is matter set free; one might say that this eternal slave is
wreaking its vengeance; it would seem as though the evil in what we
call inanimate objects had found vent and suddenly burst forth; it has
the air of having lost its patience, and of taking a mysterious, dull
revenge; nothing is so inexorable as the rage of the inanimate. The
mad mass leaps like a panther; it has the weight of an elephant, the
agility of a mouse, the obstinacy of the axe; it takes one by surprise,
like the surge of the sea; it flashes like lightning; it is deaf as the
tomb; it weighs ten thousand pounds, and it bounds like a child's ball;
it whirls as it advances, and the circles it describes are intersected
by right angles. And what help is there? How can it be overcome? A
calm succeeds the tempest, a cyclone passes over, a wind dies away, we
replace the broken mass, we check the leak, we extinguish the fire; but
what is to be done with this enormous bronze beast? How can it be
subdued? You can reason with a mastiff, take a bull by surprise,
fascinate a snake, frighten a tiger, mollify a lion; but there is no
resource with the monster known as a loosened gun.
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