All prejudice presents itself as piety, propriety.

Losing maturity in one’s fiction for the sake of marvels and monsters can also mean losing propriety, and that’s not always a bad thing.

Well, I myself, while sometimes unkempt by nights of drunkenness and debauchery, am quite convinced a man’s good character is marked by his impeccable attire.

Civility and etiquette, gentlemen, are all important.

They say that nothing can stand against such a man, for the one gun – that marked Mutiny – deals instant death, but the other – the one marked Matelotage – deals instant love, like the very darts of Eros. And who, I ask ye, who can stand up to love?

I’d take you home with me, see, but two of us in the same Behold? Just wouldn’t work, ends up in all sorts of squabbles over interior design; and the human, well, one faery in the Behold of the Eye, that just gives them a little twinkle of imagination, but more than one and it’s like a bloody fireworks display. They get all unstable and artistic, blinded by the glamour of everything, real or imagined, concrete or abstract. They get confused between beauty and truth and meaning, you see, start thinking every butterfly-brained idea must be true; before you know it they’ve gone schizo on you and you’re in a three-way firefight with all the angels and the demons, them and their bloody ideologies.