Altaïr: Tell me, ‘Master’, why did you not make me like the other Assassins? Why allow me to retain my mind?

Al Mualim: Who you are and what you do are twined too tight together. To rob you of one would have deprived me of the other, and those Templars had to die. But the truth is, I did try. In my study, when I showed you the treasure. But you are not like the others. You saw through the illusion.

Altaïr: Illusion?

Al Mualim: That’s all it’s ever done, this Templar treasure, this Piece of Eden, this word of God. Do you understand now? The Red Sea was never parted, water never turned to wine. It was not the machinations of Eris that spawned the Trojan War, but this! Illusions, all of them!

Altaïr: What you plan is no less an illusion. To force men to follow you against their will!

Al Mualim: Is it any less real than the phantoms the Saracens and Crusaders follow now? Those craven Gods, who retreat from this world that men might slaughter one another in their names? They live amongst an illusion already. I’m simply giving them another, one that demands less blood.

Altaïr: At least they choose these phantoms.

Al Mualim: Or do they? Aside from the occasional convert or heretic?

Altaïr: It isn’t right.

Al Mualim: Ahh. And now logic has left you. In its place you embrace emotion. I am disappointed.

Altaïr: What’s to be done then?

Al Mualim: You will not follow me, and I cannot compel you.

Altaïr: And you refuse to give up this evil scheme!

Al Mualim: It seems then that we are at an impasse.

Altaïr: No! We are at an end!

Al Mualim: I will miss you, Altaïr. You were my very best student.

Les Tragiques. Too depressing.

Mémoires de Monsieur d’Artagnan. Élise’s favorite.

Le traité du monde et de la lumière de Descartes (Descartes’ The World/Treatise on the Light). Never could get through that one.

[Aristotle’s Ethica Nicomachea. Too theoretical for me.]

“Your employer’s promises are nothing but hot air. And his operations are about to turn… PEAR-shaped!”

“When a hot air balloons fails, it turns PEAR-shaped.”

“When the hot air cools, the balloon takes the shape of a PEAR.”

“Before a balloon crashes, it resembles a PEAR.”

“I only said a PEAR!”

“Do you not know what a PEAR looks like?!”