"GL4" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol12)

proud to answer, though it was in my heart to say in child's
words: "If it was wrong for a boy to steal an apple to eat, then
it is wrong to steal one to play with. But not more wrong. Don't
speak to me of Orcs' work, or I may show you some!"
'It was a mistake, Master Borlas. For I had heard tales of the
Orcs and their doings, but I had not been interested till then.
You turned my mind to them. I grew out of petty thefts (my
father was not too easy), but I did not forget the Orcs. I began
to feel hatred and think of the sweetness of revenge. We played
at Orcs, I and my friends, and sometimes I thought: "Shall I
gather my band and go and cut down his trees? Then he will
think that the Orcs have really returned." But that was a long
time ago,' Saelon ended with a smile.
Borlas was startled. He was now receiving confidences, not
giving them. And there was something disquieting in the young
man's tone, something that made him wonder whether deep
down, as deep as the roots of the dark trees, the childish resent-
ment did not still linger. Yes, even in the heart of Saelon, the
friend of his own son, and the young man who had in the last
few years shown him much kindness in his loneliness.(9) At any
rate he resolved to say no more of his own thoughts to him.
'Alas!' he said, 'we all make mistakes. I do not claim wisdom,
young man, except maybe the little that one may glean with the
passing of the years. From which I know well enough the
sad truth that those who mean well may do more harm than
those who let things be. I am sorry now for what I said, if it
roused hate in your heart. Though I still think that it was just:

untimely maybe, and yet true. Surely even a boy must under-
stand that fruit is fruit, and does not reach its full being until it
is ripe; so that to misuse it unripe is to do worse than just to rob
the man that has tended it: it robs the world, hinders a good
thing from fulfilment. Those who do so join forces with all that
is amiss, with the blights and the cankers and the ill winds. And
that was the way of Orcs.'
'And is the way of Men too,' said Saelon. 'No! I do not mean
of wild men only, or those who grew "under the Shadow", as
they say. I mean all Men. I would not misuse green fruit now,
but only because I have no longer any use for unripe apples,
not for your lofty reasons, Master Borlas. Indeed I think your
reasons as unsound as an apple that has been too long in store.
To trees all Men are Orcs. Do Men consider the fulfilment of
the life-story of a tree before they cut it down? For whatever
purpose: to have its room for tilth, to use its flesh as timber or
as fuel, or merely to open the view? If trees were the judges,
would they set Men above Orcs, or indeed above the cankers
and blights? What more right, they might ask, have Men to feed
on their juices than blights?'
'A man,' said Borlas, 'who tends a tree and guards it from
blights and many other enemies does not act like an Orc or a