It is not given to every man to take a bath of multitude: to play
upon crowds is an art; and he alone can plunge, at the expense of
humankind, into a debauch of vitality, to whom a fairy has bequeathed
in his cradle the love of masks and disguises, the hate of home and the
passion of travel.
Multitude, solitude: equal terms mutually convertible by the active and
begetting poet. He who does not know how to people his solitude, does
not know either how to be alone in a busy crowd.
The poet enjoys this incomparable privilege, to be at once himself and
others. Like those wandering souls that go about seeking bodies, he
enters at will the personality of every man. For him alone, every place
is vacant; and if certain places seem to be closed against him, that is
because in his eyes they are not worth the trouble of visiting.
The solitary and thoughtful walker derives a singular intoxication
from this universal communion. He who mates easily with the crowd knows
feverish joys that must be for ever unknown to the egoist, shut up like
a coffer, and to the sluggard, imprisoned like a shell-fish. He adopts
for his own all the occupations, all the joys and all the sorrows that
circumstance sets before him.
What men call love is small indeed, narrow and weak indeed, compared
with this ineffable orgie, this sacred prostitution of the soul which
gives itself up wholly (poetry and charity!) to the unexpected which
happens, to the stranger as he passes.
It is good sometimes that the happy of this world should learn, were
it only to humble their foolish pride for an instant, that there are
higher, wider, and rarer joys than theirs. The founders of colonies,
the shepherds of nations, the missionary priests, exiled to the ends of
the earth, doubtless know something of these mysterious intoxications;
and, in the midst of the vast family that their genius has raised about
them, they must sometimes laugh at the thought of those who pity them
for their chaste lives and troubled fortunes.