"'Well,' resumed he, 'our country is in danger!'
"I did not well understand him, and yet it seemed something to me.
"'Perhaps you have never thought what your country means,' continued he,
placing his hand on my shoulder; `it is all that surrounds you, all that
has brought you up and fed you, all that you have loved! This ground that
you see, these houses, these trees, those girls who go along there
laughing--this is your country! The laws which protect you, the bread
which pays for your work, the words you interchange with others, the joy
and grief which come to you from the men and things among which you
live--this is your country! The little room where you used to see your
mother, the remembrances she has left you, the earth where she
rests--this is your country! You see it, you breathe it, everywhere!
Think to yourself, my son, of your rights and your duties, your
affections and your wants, your past and your present blessings; write
them all under a single name--and that name will be your country!'
"I was trembling with emotion, and great tears were in my eyes.
"'Ah! I understand,' cried I; 'it is our home in large; it is that part
of the world where God has placed our body and our soul.'
"'You are right, Jerome,' continued the old soldier; 'so you comprehend
also what we owe it.'
"'Truly,' resumed I, 'we owe it all that we are; it is a question of
love.'
"'And of honesty, my son,' concluded he. 'The member of a family who does
not contribute his share of work and of happiness fails in his duty, and
is a bad kinsman; the member of a partnership who does not enrich it with
all his might, with all his courage, and with all his heart, defrauds it
of what belongs to it, and is a dishonest man. It is the same with him
who enjoys the advantages of having a country, and does not accept the
burdens of it; he forfeits his honor, and is a bad citizen!'
"'And what must one do, lieutenant, to be a good citizen?' asked I.
"'Do for your country what you would do for your father and mother,' said
he.
"I did not answer at the moment; my heart was swelling, and the blood
boiling in my veins; but on returning along the road, my uncle's words
were, so to speak, written up before my eyes. I repeated, 'Do for your
country what you would do for your father and mother.' And my country is
in danger; an enemy attacks it, while I--I turn cups and balls!
"This thought tormented me so much all night that the next day I returned
to Vincennes to announce to the lieutenant that I had just enlisted, and
was going off to the frontier. The brave man pressed upon me his cross of
St. Louis, and I went away as proud as an ambassador.
"That is how, neighbor, I became a volunteer under the Republic before I
had cut my wisdom teeth."
All this was told quietly, and in the cheerful spirit of him who looks
upon an accomplished duty neither as a merit nor a grievance.
While he spoke, Father Chaufour grew animated, not on account of himself,
but of the general subject. Evidently that which occupied him in the
drama of life was not his own part, but the drama itself.
This sort of disinterestedness touched me. I prolonged my visit, and
showed myself as frank as possible, in order to win his confidence in
return. In an hour's time he knew my position and my habits; I was on the
footing of an old acquaintance.
I even confessed the ill-humor the light of his lamp put me into a short
time before. He took what I said with the touching cheerfulness which
comes from a heart in the right place, and which looks upon everything on
the good side. He neither spoke to me of the necessity which obliged him
to work while I could sleep, nor of the deprivations of the old soldier
compared to the luxury of the young clerk; he only struck his forehead,
accused himself of thoughtlessness, and promised to put list round his
door!
O great and beautiful soul! with whom nothing turns to bitterness, and
who art peremptory only in duty and benevolence!
October 15th.--This morning I was looking at a little engraving I had
framed myself, and hung over my writing-table; it is a design of
Gavarni's; in which, in a grave mood, he has represented a veteran and a
conscript.
By often contemplating these two figures, so different in expression, and
so true to life, both have become living in my eyes; I have seen them
move, I have heard them speak; the picture has become a real scene, at
which I am present as spectator.
The veteran advances slowly, his hand leaning on the shoulder of the
young soldier. His eyes, closed for ever, no longer perceive the sun
shining through the flowering chestnut-trees. In the place of his right
arm hangs an empty sleeve, and he walks with a wooden leg, the sound of
which on the pavement makes those who pass turn to look.
At the sight of this ancient wreck from our patriotic wars, the greater
number shake their heads in pity, and I seem to hear a sigh or an
imprecation.
"See the worth of glory!" says a portly merchant, turning away his eyes
in horror.
"What a deplorable use of human life!" rejoins a young man who carries a
volume of philosophy under his arm.
"The trooper would better not have left his plow," adds a countryman,
with a cunning air.
"Poor old man!" murmurs a woman, almost crying.
The veteran has heard, and he knits his brow; for it seems to him that
his guide has grown thoughtful. The latter, attracted by what he hears
around him, hardly answers the old man's questions, and his eyes, vaguely
lost in space, seem to be seeking there for the solution of some problem.
I seem to see a twitching in the gray moustaches of the veteran; he stops
abruptly, and, holding back his guide with his remaining arm:
"They all pity me," says he, "because they do not understand it; but if I
were to answer them--"
"What would you say to them, father?" asks the young man, with curiosity.
"I should say first to the woman who weeps when she looks at me, to keep
her tears for other misfortunes; for each of my wounds calls to mind some
struggle for my colors. There is room for doubting how some men have done
their duty; with me it is visible. I carry the account of my services,
written with the enemy's steel and lead, on myself; to pity me for having
done my duty is to suppose I would better have been false to it."
"And what would you say to the countryman, father?"
"I should tell him that, to drive the plow in peace, we must first secure
the country itself; and that, as long as there are foreigners ready to
eat our harvest, there must be arms to defend it."
"But the young student, too, shook his head when he lamented such a use
of life."
"Because he does not know what self-sacrifice and suffering can teach.
The books that he studies we have put in practice, though we never read
them: the principles he applauds we have defended with powder and
bayonet."
"And at the price of your limbs and your blood. The merchant said, when
he saw your maimed body, 'See the worth of glory!"'
"Do not believe him, my son: the true glory is the bread of the soul; it
is this which nourishes self-sacrifice, patience, and courage. The Master
of all has bestowed it as a tie the more between men. When we desire to
be distinguished by our brethren, do we not thus prove our esteem and our
sympathy for them? The longing for admiration is but one side of love.
No, no; the true glory can never be too dearly paid for! That which we
should deplore, child, is not the infirmities which prove a generous
self-sacrifice, but those which our vices or our imprudence have called
forth. Ah! if I could speak aloud to those who, when passing, cast looks
of pity upon me, I should say to the young man whose excesses have dimmed
his sight before he is old, 'What have you done with your eyes?' To the
slothful man, who with difficulty drags along his enervated mass of
flesh, 'What have you done with your feet?' To the old man, who is
punished for his intemperance by the gout, 'What have you done with your
hands?' To all, 'What have you done with the days God granted you, with
the faculties you should have employed for the good of your brethren?' If
you cannot answer, bestow no more of your pity upon the old soldier
maimed in his country's cause; for he--he at least--can show his scars
without shame."
October 16th.--The little engraving has made me comprehend better the
merits of Father Chaufour, and I therefore esteem him all the more.
He has just now left my attic. There no longer passes a single day
without his coming to work by my fire, or my going to sit and talk by his
board.
The old artilleryman has seen much, and likes to tell of it. For twenty
years he was an armed traveller throughout Europe, and he fought without
hatred, for he was possessed by a single thought--the honor of the
national flag! It might have been his superstition, if you will; but it
was, at the same time, his safeguard.
The word FRANCE, which was then resounding so gloriously through the
world, served as a talisman to him against all sorts of temptation. To
have to support a great name may seem a burden to vulgar minds, but it is
an encouragement to vigorous ones.
"I, too, have had many moments," said he to me the other day, "when I
have been tempted to make friends with the devil. War is not precisely
the school for rural virtues. By dint of burning, destroying, and
killing, you grow a little tough as regards your feelings; 'and, when the
bayonet has made you king, the notions of an autocrat come into your head
a little strongly. But at these moments I called to mind that country
which the lieutenant spoke of to me, and I whispered to myself the
well-known phrase, 'Toujours Francais! It has been laughed at since.
People who would make a joke of the death of their mother have turned it
into ridicule, as if the name of our country was not also a noble and a
binding thing. For my part, I shall never forget from how many follies
the title of Frenchman has kept me. When, overcome with fatigue, I have
found myself in the rear of the colors, and when the musketry was
rattling in the front ranks, many a time I heard a voice, which whispered
in my ear, 'Leave the others to fight, and for today take care of your
own hide!' But then, that word Francais! murmured within me, and I
pressed forward to help my comrades. At other times, when, irritated by
hunger, cold, and wounds, I have arrived at the hovel of some Meinherr, I
have been seized by an itching to break the master's back, and to burn
his hut; but I whispered to myself, Francais! and this name would not
rhyme with either incendiary or murderer. I have, in this way, passed
through kingdoms from east to west, and from north to south, always
determined not to bring disgrace upon my country's flag. The lieutenant,
you see, had taught me a magic word--My country! Not only must we defend
it, but we must also make it great and loved."
October 17th.--To-day I have paid my neighbor a long visit. A chance
expression led the way to his telling me more of himself than he had yet
done.
I asked him whether both his limbs had been lost in the same battle.
"No, no!" replied he; "the cannon only took my leg; it was the Clamart
quarries that my arm went to feed."
And when I asked him for the particulars--
"That's as easy as to say good-morning," continued he. "After the great
break-up at Waterloo, I stayed three months in the camp hospital to give
my wooden leg time to grow. As soon as I was able to hobble a little, I
took leave of headquarters, and took the road to Paris, where I hoped to
find some relative or friend; but no--all were gone, or underground. I
should have found myself less strange at Vienna, Madrid, or Berlin. And
although I had a leg the less to provide for, I was none the better off;
my appetite had come back, and my last sous were taking flight.
"I had indeed met my old colonel, who recollected that I had helped him
out of the skirmish at Montereau by giving him my horse, and he had
offered me bed and board at his house. I knew that the year before he had
married a castle and no few farms, so that I might become permanent
coat-brusher to a millionaire, which was not without its temptations. It
remained to see if I had not anything better to do. One evening I set
myself to reflect upon it.
"'Let us see, Chaufour,' said I to myself; 'the question is to act like a
man. The colonel's place suits you, but cannot you do anything better?
Your body is still in good condition, and your arms strong; do you not
owe all your strength to your country, as your Vincennes uncle said? Why
not leave some old soldier, more cut up than you are, to get his hospital
at the colonel's? Come, trooper, you are still fit for another stout
charge or two! You must not lay up before your time.'
"Whereupon I went to thank the colonel, and to offer my services to an
old artilleryman, who had gone back to his home at Clamart, and who had
taken up the quarryman's pick again.
"For the first few months I played the conscript's part--that is to say,
there was more stir than work; but with a good will one gets the better
of stones, as of everything else. I did not become, so to speak, the
leader of a column, but I brought up the rank among the good workmen, and
I ate my bread with a good appetite, seeing I had earned it with a good
will. For even underground, you see, I still kept my pride. The thought
that I was working to do my part in changing rocks into houses pleased my
heart. I said to myself, 'Courage, Chaufour, my old boy; you are helping
to beautify your country.' And that kept up my spirit.
"Unfortunately, some of my companions were rather too sensible to the
charms of the brandy-bottle; so much so, that one day one of them, who
could hardly distinguish his right hand from his left, thought proper to
strike a light close to a charged mine. The mine exploded suddenly, and
sent a shower of stone grape among us, which killed three men, and
carried away the arm of which I have now only the sleeve."
"So you were again without means of living?" said I to the old soldier.
"That is to say, I had to change them," replied he, quietly. "The
difficulty was to find one which would do with five fingers instead of
ten; I found it, however."
"How was that?"
"Among the Paris street-sweepers."
"What! you have been one--"
"Of the pioneers of the health force for a while, neighbor, and that was
not my worst time either. The corps of sweepers is not so low as it is
dirty, I can tell you! There are old actresses in it who could never
learn to save their money, and ruined merchants from the exchange; we
even had a professor of classics, who for a little drink would recite
Latin to you, or Greek tragedies, as you chose. They could not have
competed for the Monthyon prize; but we excused faults on account of
poverty, and cheered our poverty by our good-humor and jokes. I was as
ragged and as cheerful as the rest, while trying to be something better.
Even in the mire of the gutter I preserved my faith that nothing is
dishonorable which is useful to our country.
"'Chaufour,' said I to myself with a smile, 'after the sword, the hammer;
after the hammer, the broom; you are going downstairs, my old boy, but
you are still serving your country.'"
"'However, you ended by leaving your new profession?' said I."
"A reform was required, neighbor. The street-sweepers seldom have their
feet dry, and the damp at last made the wounds in my good leg open again.
I could no longer follow the regiment, and it was necessary to lay down
my arms. It is now two months since I left off working in the sanitary
department of Paris.
"At the first moment I was daunted. Of my four limbs, I had now only my
right hand, and even that had lost its strength; so it was necessary to
find some gentlemanly occupation for it. After trying a little of
everything, I fell upon card-box making, and here I am at cases for the
lace and buttons of the national guard; it is work of little profit, but
it is within the capacity of all. By getting up at four and working till
eight, I earn sixty-five centimes; my lodging and bowl of soup take fifty
of them, and there are three sous over for luxuries. So I am richer than
France herself, for I have no deficit in my budget; and I continue to
serve her, as I save her lace and buttons."
At these words Father Chaufour looked at me with a smile, and with his
great scissors began cutting the green paper again for his cardboard
cases. My heart was touched, and I remained lost in thought.
Here is still another member of that sacred phalanx who, in the battle of
life, always march in front for the example and the salvation of the
world! Each of these brave soldiers has his war-cry; for this one it is
"Country," for that "Home," for a third "Mankind;" but they all follow
the same standard--that of duty; for all the same divine law reigns--that
of self-sacrifice. To love something more than one's self--that is the
secret of all that is great; to know how to live for others--that is the
aim of all noble souls.
CHAPTER XI
MORAL USE OF INVENTORIES
November 13th, Nine O'clock P.M.
I had well stopped up the chinks of my window; my little carpet was
nailed down in its place; my lamp, provided with its shade, cast a
subdued light around, and my stove made a low, murmuring sound, as if
some live creature was sharing my hearth with me.
All was silent around me. But, out of doors the snow and rain swept the
roofs, and with a low, rushing sound ran along the gurgling gutters;
sometimes a gust of wind forced itself beneath the tiles, which rattled
together like castanets, and afterward it was lost in the empty corridor.
Then a slight and pleasurable shiver thrilled through my veins: I drew
the flaps of my old wadded dressing-gown around me, I pulled my
threadbare velvet cap over my eyes, and, letting myself sink deeper into
my easy-chair, while my feet basked in the heat and light which shone
through the door of the stove, I gave myself up to a sensation of
enjoyment, made more lively by the consciousness of the storm which raged
without. My eyes, swimming in a sort of mist, wandered over all the
details of my peaceful abode; they passed from my prints to my bookcase,
resting upon the little chintz sofa, the white curtains of the iron
bedstead, and the portfolio of loose papers--those archives of the
attics; and then, returning to the book I held in my hand, they attempted
to seize once more the thread of the reading which had been thus
interrupted.
In fact, this book, the subject of which had at first interested me, had
become painful to me. I had come to the conclusion that the pictures of
the writer were too sombre. His description of the miseries of the world
appeared exaggerated to me; I could not believe in such excess of poverty
and of suffering; neither God nor man could show themselves so harsh
toward the sons of Adam. The author had yielded to an artistic
temptation: he was making a show of the sufferings of humanity, as Nero
burned Rome for the sake of the picturesque.
Taken altogether, this poor human house, so often repaired, so much
criticised, is still a pretty good abode; we may find enough in it to
satisfy our wants, if we know how to set bounds to them; the happiness of
the wise man costs but little, and asks but little space.
These consoling reflections became more and more confused. At last my
book fell on the ground without my having the resolution to stoop and
take it up again; and insensibly overcome by the luxury of the silence,
the subdued light, and the warmth, I fell asleep.
I remained for some time lost in the sort of insensibility belonging to a
first sleep; at last some vague and broken sensations came over me. It
seemed to me that the day grew darker, that the air became colder. I half
perceived bushes covered with the scarlet berries which foretell the
coming of winter. I walked on a dreary road, bordered here and there with
juniper-trees white with frost. Then the scene suddenly changed. I was in
the diligence; the cold wind shook the doors and windows; the trees,
loaded with snow, passed by like ghosts; in vain I thrust my benumbed
feet into the crushed straw. At last the carriage stopped, and, by one of
those stage effects so common in sleep, I found myself alone in a barn,
without a fireplace, and open to the winds on all sides. I saw again my
mother's gentle face, known only to me in my early childhood, the noble
and stern countenance of my father, the little fair head of my sister,
who was taken from us at ten years old; all my dead family lived again
around me; they were there, exposed to the bitings of the cold and to the
pangs of hunger. My mother prayed by the resigned old man, and my sister,
rolled up on some rags of which they had made her a bed, wept in silence,
and held her naked feet in her little blue hands.
It was a page from the book I had just read transferred into my own
existence.
My heart was oppressed with inexpressible anguish. Crouched in a corner,
with my eyes fixed upon this dismal picture, I felt the cold slowly
creeping upon me, and I said to myself with bitterness:
"Let us die, since poverty is a dungeon guarded by suspicion, apathy, and
contempt, and from which it is vain to try to escape; let us die, since
there is no place for us at the banquet of the living!"
And I tried to rise to join my mother again, and to wait at her feet for
the hour of release.
This effort dispelled my dream, and I awoke with a start.
I looked around me; my lamp was expiring, the fire in my stove
extinguished, and my half-opened door was letting in an icy wind. I got
up, with a shiver, to shut and double-lock it; then I made for the
alcove, and went to bed in haste.
But the cold kept me awake a long time, and my thoughts continued the
interrupted dream.
The pictures I had lately accused of exaggeration now seemed but a too
faithful representation of reality; and I went to sleep without being
able to recover my optimism--or my warmth.
Thus did a cold stove and a badly closed door alter my point of view. All
went well when my blood circulated properly; all looked gloomy when the
cold laid hold on me.
This reminds me of the story of the duchess who was obliged to pay a
visit to the neighboring convent on a winter's day. The convent was poor,
there was no wood, and the monks had nothing but their discipline and the
ardor of their prayers to keep out the cold. The duchess, who was
shivering with cold, returned home, greatly pitying the poor monks. While
the servants were taking off her cloak and adding two more logs to her
fire, she called her steward, whom she ordered to send some wood to the
convent immediately. She then had her couch moved close to the fireside,
the warmth of which soon revived her. The recollection of what she had
just suffered was speedily lost in her present comfort, when the steward
came in again to ask how many loads of wood he was to send.
"Oh! you may wait," said the great lady carelessly; "the weather is very
much milder."
Thus, man's judgments are formed less from reason than from sensation;
and as sensation comes to him from the outward world, so he finds himself
more or less under its influence; by little and little he imbibes a
portion of his habits and feelings from it.
It is not, then, without cause that, when we wish to judge of a stranger
beforehand, we look for indications of his character in the circumstances
which surround him. The things among which we live are necessarily made
to take our image, and we unconsciously leave in them a thousand
impressions of our minds. As we can judge by an empty bed of the height
and attitude of him who has slept in it, so the abode of every man
discovers to a close observer the extent of his intelligence and the
feelings of his heart. Bernardin de St.-Pierre has related the story of a
young girl who refused a suitor because he would never have flowers or
domestic animals in his house. Perhaps the sentence was severe, but not
without reason. We may presume that a man insensible to beauty and to
humble affection must be ill prepared to feel the enjoyments of a happy
marriage.
14th, seven o'clock P.M.--This morning, as I was opening my journal to
write, I had a visit from our old cashier.
His sight is not so good as it was, his hand begins to shake, and the
work he was able to do formerly is now becoming somewhat laborious to
him. I had undertaken to write out some of his papers, and he came for
those I had finished.
We conversed a long time by the stove, while he was drinking a cup of
coffee which I made him take.
M. Rateau is a sensible man, who has observed much and speaks little; so
that he has always something to say.
While looking over the accounts I had prepared for him, his look fell
upon my journal, and I was obliged to acknowledge that in this way I
wrote a diary of my actions and thoughts every evening for private use.
From one thing to another, I began speaking to him of my dream the day
before, and my reflections about the influence of outward objects upon
our ordinary sentiments. He smiled.
"Ah! you, too, have my superstitions," he said, quietly. "I have always
believed, like you, that you may know the game by the lair: it is only
necessary to have tact and experience; but without them we commit
ourselves to many rash judgments. For my part. I have been guilty of this
more than once, but sometimes I have also drawn a right conclusion. I
recollect especially an adventure which goes as far back as the first
years of my youth--"
He stopped. I looked at him as if I waited for his story, and he told it
me at once.
At this time he was still but third clerk to an attorney at Orleans. His
master had sent him to Montargis on different affairs, and he intended to
return in the diligence the same evening, after having received the
amount of a bill at a neighboring town; but they kept him at the debtor's
house, and when he was able to set out the day had already closed.
Fearing not to be able to reach Montargis in good time, he took a
crossroad they pointed out to him. Unfortunately the fog increased, no
star was visible in the heavens, and the darkness became so great that he
lost his road. He tried to retrace his steps, passed twenty footpaths,
and at last was completely astray.
After the vexation of losing his place in the diligence, came the feeling
of uneasiness as to his situation. He was alone, on foot, lost in a
forest, without any means of finding his right road again, and with a
considerable sum of money about him, for which he was responsible. His
anxiety was increased by his inexperience. The idea of a forest was
connected in his mind with so many adventures of robbery and murder, that
he expected some fatal encounter every instant.
To say the truth, his situation was not encouraging. The place was not
considered safe, and for some time past there had been rumors of the
sudden disappearance of several horse-dealers, though there was no trace
of any crime having been committed.
Our young traveller, with his eyes staring forward, and his ears
listening, followed a footpath which he supposed might take him to some
house or road; but woods always succeeded to woods. At last he perceived
a light at a distance, and in a quarter of an hour he reached the
highroad.
A single house, the light from which had attracted him, appeared at a
little distance. He was going toward the entrance gate of the courtyard,
when the trot of a horse made him turn his head. A man on horseback had
just appeared at the turning of the road, and in an instant was close to
him.
The first words he addressed to the young man showed him to be the farmer
himself. He related how he had lost himself, and learned from the
countryman that he was on the road to Pithiviers. Montargis was three
leagues behind him.
The fog had insensibly changed into a drizzling rain, which was beginning
to wet the young clerk through; he seemed afraid of the distance he had
still to go, and the horseman, who saw his hesitation, invited him to
come into the farmhouse.
It had something of the look of a fortress. Surrounded by a pretty high
wall, it could not be seen except through the bars of the great gate,
which was carefully closed. The farmer, who had got off his horse, did
not go near it, but, turning to the right, reached another entrance
closed in the same way, but of which he had the key.
Hardly had he passed the threshold when a terrible barking resounded from
each end of the yard. The farmer told his guest to fear nothing, and
showed him the dogs chained up to their kennels; both were of an
extraordinary size, and so savage that the sight of their master himself
could not quiet them.
A boy, attracted by their barking, came out of the house and took the
farmer's horse. The latter began questioning him about some orders he had
given before he left the house, and went toward the stable to see that
they had been executed.
Thus left alone, our clerk looked about him.
A lantern which the boy had placed on the ground cast a dim light over
the courtyard. All around seemed empty and deserted. Not a trace was
visible of the disorder often seen in a country farmyard, and which shows
a temporary cessation of the work which is soon to be resumed again.
Neither a cart forgotten where the horses had been unharnessed, nor
sheaves of corn heaped up ready for threshing, nor a plow overturned in a
corner and half hidden under the freshly-cut clover. The yard was swept,
the barns shut up and padlocked. Not a single vine creeping up the walls;
everywhere stone, wood, and iron!
He took up the lantern and went up to the corner of the house. Behind was
a second yard, where he heard the barking of a third dog, and a covered
wall was built in the middle of it.
Our traveller looked in vain for the little farm garden, where pumpkins
of different sorts creep along the ground, or where the bees from the
hives hum under the hedges of honeysuckle and elder. Verdure and flowers
were nowhere to be seen. He did not even perceive the sight of a
poultry-yard or pigeon-house. The habitation of his host was everywhere
wanting in that which makes the grace and the life of the country.
The young man thought that his host must be of a very careless or a very
calculating disposition, to concede so little to domestic enjoyments and
the pleasures of the eye; and judging, in spite of himself, by what he
saw, he could not help feeling a distrust of his character.
In the mean time the farmer returned from the stables, and made him enter
the house.
The inside of the farmhouse corresponded to its outside. The whitewashed
walls had no other ornament than a row of guns of all sizes; the massive
furniture hardly redeemed its clumsy appearance by its great solidity.
The cleanliness was doubtful, and the absence of all minor conveniences
proved that a woman's care was wanting in the household concerns. The
young clerk learned that the farmer, in fact, lived here with no one but
his two sons.
Of this, indeed, the signs were plain enough. A table with the cloth
laid, that no one had taken the trouble to clear away, was left near the
window. The plates and dishes were scattered upon it without any order,
and loaded with potato-parings and half-picked bones. Several empty
bottles emitted an odor of brandy, mixed with the pungent smell of
tobacco-smoke.
After seating his guest, the farmer lighted his pipe, and his two sons
resumed their work by the fireside. Now and then the silence was just
broken by a short remark, answered by a word or an exclamation; and then
all became as mute as before.
"From my childhood," said the old cashier, "I had been very sensible to
the impression of outward objects; later in life, reflection had taught
me to study the causes of these impressions rather than to drive them
away. I set myself, then, to examine everything around me with great
attention.
"Below the guns, I had remarked on entering, some wolftraps were
suspended, and to one of them still hung the mangled remains of a wolf's
paw, which they had not yet taken off from the iron teeth. The blackened
chimneypiece was ornamented by an owl and a raven nailed on the wall,
their wings extended, and their throats with a huge nail through each; a
fox's skin, freshly flayed, was spread before the window; and a larder
hook, fixed into the principal beam, held a headless goose, whose body
swayed about over our heads.
"My eyes were offended by all these details, and I turned them again upon
my hosts. The father, who sat opposite to me, only interrupted his
smoking to pour out his drink, or address some reprimand to his sons. The
eldest of these was scraping a deep bucket, and the bloody scrapings,
which he threw into the fire every instant, filled the room with a
disagreeable fetid smell; the second son was sharpening some butcher's
knives. I learned from a word dropped from the father that they were
preparing to kill a pig the next day.
"These occupations and the whole aspect of things inside the house told
of such habitual coarseness in their way of living as seemed to explain,
while it formed the fitting counterpart of, the forbidding gloominess of
the outside. My astonishment by degrees changed into disgust, and my
disgust into uneasiness. I cannot detail the whole chain of ideas which
succeeded one another in my imagination; but, yielding to an impulse I
could not overcome, I got up, declaring I would go on my road again.
"The farmer made some effort to keep me; he spoke of the rain, of the
darkness, and of the length of the way. I replied to all by the absolute
necessity there was for my being at Montargis that very night; and
thanking him for his brief hospitality, I set off again in a haste which
might well have confirmed the truth of my words to him.
"However, the freshness of the night and the exercise of walking did not
fail to change the directions of my thoughts. When away from the objects
which had awakened such lively disgust in me, I felt it gradually
diminishing. I began to smile at the susceptibility of my feelings, and
then, in proportion as the rain became heavier and colder, these
strictures on myself assumed a tone of ill-temper. I silently accused
myself of the absurdity of mistaking sensation for admonitions of my
reason. After all, were not the farmer and his sons free to live alone,
to hunt, to keep dogs, and to kill a pig? Where was the crime of it? With
less nervous susceptibility, I should have accepted the shelter they
offered me, and I should now be sleeping snugly on a truss of straw,
instead of walking with difficulty through the cold and drizzling rain. I
thus continued to reproach myself, until, toward morning, I arrived at
Montargis, jaded and benumbed with cold.
"When, however, I got up refreshed, toward the middle of the next day, I
instinctively returned to my first opinion. The appearance of the
farmhouse presented itself to me under the same repulsive colors which
the evening before had determined me to make my escape from it. Reason
itself remained silent when reviewing all those coarse details, and was
forced to recognize in them the indications of a low nature, or else the
presence of some baleful influence.
"I went away the next day without being able to learn anything concerning
the farmer or his sons; but the recollection of my adventure remained
deeply fixed in my memory.
"Ten years afterward I was travelling in the diligence through the
department of the Loiret; I was leaning from the window, and looking at
some coppice ground now for the first time brought under cultivation, and
the mode of clearing which one of my travelling companions was explaining
to me, when my eyes fell upon a walled inclosure, with an iron-barred
gate. Inside it I perceived a house with all the blinds closed, and which
I immediately recollected; it was the farmhouse where I had been
sheltered. I eagerly pointed it out to my companion, and asked who lived
in it.
"'Nobody just now,' replied he.
"'But was it not kept, some years ago, by a farmer and his two sons?'
"'The Turreaus;' said my travelling companion, looking at me; 'did you
know them?'
"'I saw them once.'
"He shook his head.
"'Yes, yes!' resumed he; 'for many years they lived there like wolves in
their den; they merely knew how to till land, kill game, and drink. The
father managed the house, but men living alone, without women to love
them, without children to soften them, and without God to make them think
of heaven, always turn into wild beasts, you see; so one morning the
eldest son, who had been drinking too much brandy, would not harness the
plow-horses; his father struck him with his whip, and the son, who was
mad drunk, shot him dead with his gun.'"
16th, P.M.--I have been thinking of the story of the old cashier these
two days; it came so opportunely upon the reflections my dream had
suggested to me.
Have I not an important lesson to learn from all this?
If our sensations have an incontestable influence upon our judgments, how
comes it that we are so little careful of those things which awaken or
modify these sensations? The external world is always reflected in us as
in a mirror, and fills our minds with pictures which, unconsciously to
ourselves, become the germs of our opinions and of our rules of conduct.
All the objects which surround us are then, in reality, so many talismans
whence good and evil influences are emitted, and it is for us to choose
them wisely, so as to create a healthy atmosphere for our minds.
Feeling convinced of this truth, I set about making a survey of my attic.
The first object on which my eyes rest is an old map of the history of
the principal monastery in my native province. I had unrolled it with
much satisfaction, and placed it on the most conspicuous part of the
wall. Why had I given it this place? Ought this sheet of old worm-eaten
parchment to be of so much value to me, who am neither an antiquary nor a
scholar? Is not its real importance in my sight that one of the abbots
who founded it bore my name, and that I shall, perchance, be able to make
myself a genealogical tree of it for the edification of my visitors?
While writing this, I feel my own blushes. Come, down with the map! let
us banish it into my deepest drawer.
As I passed my glass, I perceived several visiting cards complacently
displayed in the frame. By what chance is it that there are only names
that make a show among them? Here is a Polish count--a retired
colonel--the deputy of my department. Quick, quick, into the fire with
these proofs of vanity! and let us put this card in the handwriting of
our office-boy, this direction for cheap dinners, and the receipt of the
broker where I bought my last armchair, in their place. These indications
of my poverty will serve, as Montaigne says, 'mater ma superbe', and will
always make me recollect the modesty in which the dignity of the lowly
consists.
I have stopped before the prints hanging upon the wall. This large and
smiling Pomona, seated on sheaves of corn, and whose basket is
overflowing with fruit, only produces thoughts of joy and plenty; I was
looking at her the other day, when I fell asleep denying such a thing as
misery. Let us give her as companion this picture of Winter, in which
everything tells of sorrow and suffering: one picture will modify the
other.
And this Happy Family of Greuze's! What joy in the children's eyes! What
sweet repose in the young woman's face! What religious feeling in the
grandfather's countenance! May God preserve their happiness to them! but
let us hang by its side the picture of this mother, who weeps over an
empty cradle. Human life has two faces, both of which we must dare to
contemplate in their turn.
Let me hide, too, these ridiculous monsters which ornament my
chimneypiece. Plato has said that "the beautiful is nothing else than the
visible form of the good." If it is so, the ugly should be the visible
form of the evil, and, by constantly beholding it, the mind insensibly
deteriorates.
But above all, in order to cherish the feelings of kindness and pity, let
me hang at the foot of my bed this affecting picture of the Last Sleep!
Never have I been able to look at it without feeling my heart touched.
An old woman, clothed in rags, is lying by a roadside; her stick is at
her feet, and her head rests upon a stone; she has fallen asleep; her
hands are clasped; murmuring a prayer of her childhood, she sleeps her
last sleep, she dreams her last dream!
She sees herself, again a strong and happy child, keeping the sheep on
the common, gathering the berries from the hedges, singing, curtsying to
passers-by, and making the sign of the cross when the first star appears
in the heavens! Happy time, filled with fragrance and sunshine! She wants
nothing yet, for she is ignorant of what there is to wish for.
But see her grown up; the time is come for working bravely: she must cut
the corn, thresh the wheat, carry the bundles of flowering clover or
branches of withered leaves to the farm. If her toil is hard, hope shines
like a sun over everything and it wipes the drops of sweat away. The
growing girl already sees that life is a task, but she still sings as she
fulfills it.
By-and-bye the burden becomes heavier; she is a wife, she is a mother!
She must economize the bread of to-day, have her eye upon the morrow,
take care of the sick, and sustain the feeble; she must act, in short,
that part of an earthly Providence, so easy when God gives us his aid, so
hard when he forsakes us. She is still strong, but she is anxious; she
sings no longer!
Yet a few years, and all is overcast. The husband's health is broken; his
wife sees him pine away by the now fireless hearth; cold and hunger
finish what sickness had begun; he dies, and his widow sits on the ground
by the coffin provided by the charity of others, pressing her two
half-naked little ones in her arms. She dreads the future, she weeps, and
she droops her head.
At last the future has come; the children are grown up, but they are no
longer with her. Her son is fighting under his country's flag, and his
sister is gone. Both have been lost to her for a long time--perhaps
forever; and the strong girl, the brave wife, the courageous mother, is
henceforth only a poor old beggar-woman, without a family, and without a
home! She weeps no more, sorrow has subdued her; she surrenders, and
waits for death.
Death, that faithful friend of the wretched, is come: not hideous and
with mockery, as superstition represents, but beautiful, smiling, and
crowned with stars! The gentle phantom stoops to the beggar; its pale
lips murmur a few airy words, which announce to her the end of her
labors; a peaceful joy comes over the aged beggarwoman, and, leaning on
the shoulder of the great Deliverer, she has passed unconsciously from
her last earthly sleep to her eternal rest.
Lie there, thou poor way-wearied woman! The leaves will serve thee for a
winding-sheet. Night will shed her tears of dew over thee, and the birds
will sing sweetly by thy remains. Thy visit here below will not have left
more trace than their flight through the air; thy name is already
forgotten, and the only legacy thou hast to leave is the hawthorn stick
lying forgotten at thy feet!
Well! some one will take it up--some soldier of that great human host
which is scattered abroad by misery or by vice; for thou art not an
exception, thou art an instance; and under the same sun which shines so
pleasantly upon all, in the midst of these flowering vineyards, this ripe
corn, and these wealthy cities, entire generations suffer, succeed each
other, and still bequeath to each the beggar's stick!
The sight of this sad picture shall make me more grateful for what God
has given me, and more compassionate for those whom he has treated with
less indulgence; it shall be a lesson and a subject for reflection for
me.
Ah! if we would watch for everything that might improve and instruct us;
if the arrangements of our daily life were so disposed as to be a
constant school for our minds! but oftenest we take no heed of them. Man
is an eternal mystery to himself; his own person is a house into which he
never enters, and of which he studies the outside alone. Each of us need
have continually before him the famous inscription which once instructed
Socrates, and which was engraved on the walls of Delphi by an unknown
hand:
KNOW THYSELF.
CHAPTER XII
THE END OF THE YEAR
December 30th, P.M.
I was in bed, and hardly recovered from the delirious fever which had
kept me for so long between life and death. My weakened brain was making
efforts to recover its activity; my thoughts, like rays of light
struggling through the clouds, were still confused and imperfect; at
times I felt a return of the dizziness which made a chaos of all my
ideas, and I floated, so to speak, between alternate fits of mental
wandering and consciousness.
Sometimes everything seemed plain to me, like the prospect which, from
the top of some high mountain, opens before us in clear weather. We
distinguish water, woods, villages, cattle, even the cottage perched on
the edge of the ravine; then suddenly there comes a gust of wind laden
with mist, and all is confused and indistinct.
Thus, yielding to the oscillations of a half-recovered reason, I allowed
my mind to follow its various impulses without troubling myself to
separate the real from the imaginary; I glided softly from one to the
other, and my dreams and waking thoughts succeeded closely upon one
another.
Now, while my mind is wandering in this unsettled state, see, underneath
the clock which measures the hours with its loud ticking, a female figure
appears before me!
At first sight I saw enough to satisfy me that she was not a daughter of
Eve. In her eye was the last flash of an expiring star, and her face had
the pallor of an heroic death-struggle. She was dressed in a drapery of a
thousand changing colors of the brightest and the most sombre hues, and
held a withered garland in her hand.
After having contemplated her for some moments, I asked her name, and
what brought her into my attic. Her eyes, which were following the
movements of the clock, turned toward me, and she replied:
"You see in me the year which is just drawing to its end; I come to
receive your thanks and your farewell."
I raised myself on my elbow in surprise, which soon gave place to bitter
resentment.
"Ah! you want thanks," cried I; "but first let me know what for?
"When I welcomed your coming, I was still young and vigorous: you have
taken from me each day some little of my strength, and you have ended by
inflicting an illness upon me; already, thanks to you, my blood is less
warm, my muscles less firm, and my feet less agile than before! You have
planted the germs of infirmity in my bosom; there, where the summer
flowers of life were growing, you have wickedly sown the nettles of old
age!
"And, as if it were not enough to weaken my body, you have also
diminished the powers of my soul; you have extinguished her enthusiasm;
she is become more sluggish and more timid. Formerly her eyes took in the
whole of mankind in their generous survey; but you have made her
nearsighted, and now she hardly sees beyond herself! That is what you
have done for my spiritual being: then as to my outward existence, see to
what grief, neglect, and misery you have reduced it! For the many days
that the fever has kept me chained to this bed, who has taken care of
this home in which I placed all my joy? Shall I not find my closets
empty, my bookcase, stripped, all my poor treasures lost through
negligence or dishonesty? Where are the plants I cultivated, the birds I
fed? All are gone! my attic is despoiled, silent and solitary! As it is
only for the last few moments that I have returned to a consciousness of
what surrounds me, I am even ignorant who has nursed me during my long
illness! Doubtless some hireling, who will leave when all my means of
recompense are exhausted! And what will my masters, for whom I am bound
to work, have said to my absence? At this time of the year, when business
is most pressing, can they have done without me, will they even have
tried to do so? Perhaps I am already superseded in the humble situation
by which I earned my daily bread! And it is thou-thou alone, wicked
daughter of Time--who hast brought all these misfortunes upon me:
strength, health, comfort, work--thou hast taken all from me. I have only
received outrage and loss from thee, and yet thou darest to claim my
gratitude!"
"Ah! die then, since thy day is come; but die despised and cursed; and
may I write on thy tomb the epitaph the Arabian poet inscribed upon that
of a king:
"'Rejoice, thou passer-by: he whom we have buried here
cannot live again.'"
.......................
I was wakened by a hand taking mine; and opening my eyes, I recognized
the doctor.
After having felt my pulse, he nodded his head, sat down at the foot of
the bed, and looked at me, rubbing his nose with his snuffbox. I have
since learned that this was a sign of satisfaction with the doctor.
"Well! so we wanted old snub-nose to carry us off?" said M. Lambert, in
his half-joking, half-scolding way. "What the deuce of a hurry we were
in! It was necessary to hold you back with both arms at least!"
"Then you had given me up, doctor?" asked I, rather alarmed.
"Not at all," replied the old physician. "We can't give up what we have
not got; and I make it a rule never to have any hope. We are but
instruments in the hands of Providence, and each of us should say, with
Ambroise Pare: 'I tend him, God cures him!"'
"May He be blessed then, as well as you," cried I; "and may my health
come back with the new year!"
M. Lambert shrugged his shoulders.
"Begin by asking yourself for it," resumed he, bluntly. "God has given it
you, and it is your own sense, and not chance, that must keep it for you.
One would think, to hear people talk, that sickness comes upon us like
the rain or the sunshine, without one having a word to say in the matter.
Before we complain of being ill we should prove that we deserve to be
well."
I was about to smile, but the doctor looked angry.
"Ah! you think that I am joking," resumed he, raising his voice; "but
tell me, then, which of us gives his health the same attention that he
gives to his business? Do you economize your strength as you economize
your money? Do you avoid excess and imprudence in the one case with the
same care as extravagance or foolish speculations in the other? Do you
keep as regular accounts of your mode of living as you do of your income?
Do you consider every evening what has been wholesome or unwholesome for
you, with the same care that you bring to the examination of your
expenditure? You may smile; but have you not brought this illness on
yourself by a thousand indiscretions?"
I began to protest against this, and asked him to point out these
indiscretions. The old doctor spread out his fingers, and began to reckon
upon them one by one.
"Primo," cried he, "want of exercise. You live here like a mouse in a
cheese, without air, motion, or change. Consequently, the blood
circulates badly, the fluids thicken, the muscles, being inactive, do not
claim their share of nutrition, the stomach flags, and the brain grows
weary.
"Secundo. Irregular food. Caprice is your cook; your stomach a slave who
must accept what you give it, but who presently takes a sullen revenge,
like all slaves.
"Tertio. Sitting up late. Instead of using the night for sleep, you spend
it in reading; your bedstead is a bookcase, your pillows a desk! At the
time when the wearied brain asks for rest, you lead it through these
nocturnal orgies, and you are surprised to find it the worse for them the
next day.
"Quarto. Luxurious habits. Shut up in your attic, you insensibly surround
yourself with a thousand effeminate indulgences. You must have list for
your door, a blind for your window, a carpet for your feet, an easy-chair
stuffed with wool for your back, your fire lit at the first sign of cold,
and a shade to your lamp; and thanks to all these precautions, the least
draught makes you catch cold, common chairs give you no rest, and you
must wear spectacles to support the light of day. You have thought you
were acquiring comforts, and you have only contracted infirmities.
"Quinto"
"Ah! enough, enough, doctor!" cried I. "Pray, do not carry your
examination farther; do not attach a sense of remorse to each of my
pleasures."
The old doctor rubbed his nose with his snuffbox.
"You see," said he, more gently, and rising at the same time, "you would
escape from the truth. You shrink from inquiry--a proof that you are
guilty. 'Habemus confitentem reum'! But at least, my friend, do not go on
laying the blame on Time, like an old woman."
Thereupon he again felt my pulse, and took his leave, declaring that his
function was at an end, and that the rest depended upon myself.
When the doctor was gone, I set about reflecting upon what he had said.
Although his words were too sweeping, they were not the less true in the
main. How often we accuse chance of an illness, the origin of which we
should seek in ourselves! Perhaps it would have been wiser to let him
finish the examination he had begun.
But is there not another of more importance--that which concerns the
health of the soul? Am I so sure of having neglected no means of
preserving that during the year which is now ending? Have I, as one of
God's soldiers upon earth, kept my courage and my arms efficient? Shall I
be ready for the great review of souls which must pass before Him WHO IS
in the dark valley of Jehoshaphat?
Darest thou examine thyself, O my soul! and see how often thou hast
erred?
First, thou hast erred through pride! for I have not duly valued the
lowly. I have drunk too deeply of the intoxicating wines of genius, and
have found no relish in pure water. I have disdained those words which
had no other beauty than their sincerity; I have ceased to love men
solely because they are men--I have loved them for their endowments; I
have contracted the world within the narrow compass of a pantheon, and my
sympathy has been awakened by admiration only. The vulgar crowd, which I
ought to have followed with a friendly eye because it is composed of my
brothers in hope or grief, I have let pass by with as much indifference
as if it were a flock of sheep. I am indignant with him who rolls in
riches and despises the man poor in worldly wealth; and yet, vain of my
trifling knowledge, I despise him who is poor in mind--I scorn the
poverty of intellect as others do that of dress; I take credit for a gift
which I did not bestow on myself, and turn the favor of fortune into a
weapon with which to attack others.
Ah! if, in the worst days of revolutions, ignorance has revolted and
raised a cry of hatred against genius, the fault is not alone in the
envious malice of ignorance, but comes in part, too, from the
contemptuous pride of knowledge.
Alas! I have too completely forgotten the fable of the two sons of the
magician of Bagdad.
One of them, struck by an irrevocable decree of destiny, was born blind,
while the other enjoyed all the delights of sight. The latter, proud of
his own advantages, laughed at his brother's blindness, and disdained him
as a companion. One morning the blind boy wished to go out with him.
"To what purpose," said he, "since the gods have put nothing in common
between us? For me creation is a stage, where a thousand charming scenes
and wonderful actors appear in succession; for you it is only an obscure
abyss, at the bottom of which you hear the confused murmur of an
invisible world. Continue then alone in your darkness, and leave the
pleasures of light to those upon whom the day-star shines."
With these words he went away, and his brother, left alone, began to cry
bitterly. His father, who heard him, immediately ran to him, and tried to
console him by promising to give him whatever he desired.
"Can you give me sight?" asked the child.
"Fate does not permit it," said the magician.
"Then," cried the blind boy, eagerly, "I ask you to put out the sun!"
Who knows whether my pride has not provoked the same wish on the part of
some one of my brothers who does not see?
But how much oftener have I erred through levity and want of thought! How
many resolutions have I taken at random! how many judgments have I
pronounced for the sake of a witticism! how many mischiefs have I not
done without any sense of my responsibility! The greater part of men harm
one another for the sake of doing something. We laugh at the honor of
one, and compromise the reputation of another, like an idle man who
saunters along a hedgerow, breaking the young branches and destroying the
most beautiful flowers.
And, nevertheless, it is by this very thoughtlessness that the fame of
some men is created. It rises gradually, like one of those mysterious
mounds in barbarous countries, to which a stone is added by every
passerby; each one brings something at random, and adds it as he passes,
without being able himself to see whether he is raising a pedestal or a
gibbet. Who will dare look behind him, to see his rash judgments held up
there to view?
Some time ago I was walking along the edge of the green mound on which
the Montmartre telegraph stands. Below me, along one of the zigzag paths
which wind up the hill, a man and a girl were coming up, and arrested my
attention. The man wore a shaggy coat, which gave him some resemblance to
a wild beast; and he held a thick stick in his hand, with which he
described various strange figures in the air. He spoke very loud, and in
a voice which seemed to me convulsed with passion. He raised his eyes
every now and then with an expression of savage harshness, and it
appeared to me that he was reproaching and threatening the girl, and that
she was listening to him with a submissiveness which touched my heart.
Two or three times she ventured a few words, doubtless in the attempt to
justify herself; but the man in the greatcoat began again immediately
with his loud and angry voice, his savage looks, and his threatening
evolutions in the air. I followed him with my eyes, vainly endeavoring to
catch a word as he passed, until he disappeared behind the hill.
I had evidently just seen one of those domestic tyrants whose sullen
tempers are excited by the patience of their victims, and who, though
they have the power to become the beneficent gods of a family, choose
rather to be their tormentors.
I cursed the unknown savage in my heart, and I felt indignant that these
crimes against the sacred peace of home could not be punished as they
deserve, when I heard his voice approaching nearer. He had turned the
path, and soon appeared before me at the top of the slope.
The first glance, and his first words, explained everything to me: in
place of what I had taken for the furious tones and terrible looks of an
angry man, and the attitude of a frightened victim, I had before me only
an honest citizen, who squinted and stuttered, but who was explaining the
management of silkworms to his attentive daughter.
I turned homeward, smiling at my mistake; but before I reached my
faubourg I saw a crowd running, I heard calls for help, and every finger
pointed in the same direction to a distant column of flame. A manufactory
had taken fire, and everybody was rushing forward to assist in
extinguishing it.
I hesitated. Night was coming on; I felt tired; a favorite book was
awaiting me; I thought there would be no want of help, and I went on my
way.
Just before I had erred from want of consideration; now it was from
selfishness and cowardice.
But what! have I not on a thousand other occasions forgotten the duties
which bind us to our fellowmen? Is this the first time I have avoided
paying society what I owe it? Have I not always behaved to my companions
with injustice, and like the lion? Have I not claimed successively every
share? If any one is so ill-advised as to ask me to return some little
portion, I get provoked, I am angry, I try to escape from it by every
means. How many times, when I have perceived a beggar sitting huddled up
at the end of the street, have I not gone out of my way, for fear that
compassion would impoverish me by forcing me to be charitable! How often
have I doubted the misfortunes of others, that I might with justice
harden my heart against them.
With what satisfaction have I sometimes verified the vices of the poor
man, in order to show that his misery is the punishment he deserves!
Oh! let us not go farther--let us not go farther! I interrupted the
doctor's examination, but how much sadder is this one! We pity the
diseases of the body; we shudder at those of the soul.
I was happily disturbed in my reverie by my neighbor, the old soldier.
Now I think of it, I seem always to have seen, during my fever, the
figure of this good old man, sometimes leaning against my bed, and
sometimes sitting at his table, surrounded by his sheets of pasteboard.
He has just come in with his glue-pot, his quire of green paper, and his
great scissors. I called him by his name; he uttered a joyful
exclamation, and came near me.
"Well! so the bullet is found again!" cried he, taking my two hands into
the maimed one which was left him; "it has not been without trouble, I
can tell you; the campaign has been long enough to win two clasps in. I
have seen no few fellows with the fever batter windmills during my
hospital days: at Leipsic, I had a neighbor who fancied a chimney was on
fire in his stomach, and who was always calling for the fire-engines; but
the third day it all went out of itself. But with you it has lasted
twenty-eight days--as long as one of the Little Corporal's campaigns."
"I am not mistaken then; you were near me?"
"Well! I had only to cross the passage. This left hand has not made you a
bad nurse for want of the right; but, bah! you did not know what hand
gave you drink, and it did not prevent that beggar of a fever from being
drowned--for all the world like Poniatowski in the Elster."
The old soldier began to laugh, and I, feeling too much affected to
speak, pressed his hand against my breast. He saw my emotion, and
hastened to put an end to it.
"By-the-bye, you know that from to-day you have a right to draw your
rations again," resumed he gayly; "four meals, like the German
meinherrs--nothing more! The doctor is your house steward."
"We must find the cook, too," replied I, with a smile.
"She is found," said the veteran.
"Who is she?"
"Genevieve."
"The fruit-woman?"
"While I am talking she is cooking for you, neighbor; and do not fear her
sparing either butter or trouble. As long as life and death were fighting
for you, the honest woman passed her time in going up and down stairs to
learn which way the battle went. And, stay, I am sure this is she."
In fact we heard steps in the passage, and he went to open the door.
"Oh, well!" continued he, "it is Mother Millot, our portress, another of
your good friends, neighbor, and whose poultices I recommend to you. Come
in, Mother Millot--come in; we are quite bonny boys this morning, and
ready to step a minuet if we had our dancing-shoes."
The portress came in, quite delighted. She brought my linen, washed and
mended by herself, with a little bottle of Spanish wine, the gift of her
sailor son, and kept for great occasions. I would have thanked her, but
the good woman imposed silence upon me, under the pretext that the doctor
had forbidden me to speak. I saw her arrange everything in my drawers,
the neat appearance of which struck me; an attentive hand had evidently
been there, and day by day put straight the unavoidable disorder
consequent on sickness.
As she finished, Genevieve arrived with my dinner; she was followed by
Mother Denis, the milk-woman over the way, who had learned, at the same
time, the danger I had been in, and that I was now beginning to be
convalescent. The good Savoyard brought me a new-laid egg, which she
herself wished to see me eat.
It was necessary to relate minutely all my illness to her. At every
detail she uttered loud exclamations; then, when the portress warned her
to be less noisy, she excused herself in a whisper. They made a circle
around me to see me eat my dinner; each mouthful I took was accompanied
by their expressions of satisfaction and thankfulness. Never had the King
of France, when he dined in public, excited such admiration among the
spectators.
As they were taking the dinner away, my colleague, the old cashier,
entered in his turn.
I could not prevent my heart beating as I recognized him. How would the
heads of the firm look upon my absence, and what did he come to tell me?
I waited with inexpressible anxiety for him to speak; but he sat down by
me, took my hand, and began rejoicing over my recovery, without saying a
word about our masters. I could not endure this uncertainty any longer.
"And the Messieurs Durmer," asked I, hesitatingly, "how have they
taken--the interruption to my work?"
"There has been no interruption," replied the old clerk, quietly.
"What do you mean?"
"Each one in the office took a share of your duty; all has gone on as
usual, and the Messieurs Durmer have perceived no difference."
This was too much. After so many instances of affection, this filled up
the measure. I could not restrain my tears.
Thus the few services I had been able to do for others had been
acknowledged by them a hundredfold! I had sown a little seed, and every
grain had fallen on good ground, and brought forth a whole sheaf. Ah!
this completes the lesson the doctor gave me. If it is true that the
diseases, whether of the mind or body, are the fruit of our follies and
our vices, sympathy and affection are also the rewards of our having done
our duty. Every one of us, with God's help, and within the narrow limits
of human capability, himself makes his own disposition, character, and
permanent condition.
Everybody is gone; the old soldier has brought me back my flowers and my
birds, and they are my only companions. The setting sun reddens my
half-closed curtains with its last rays. My brain is clear, and my heart
lighter. A thin mist floats before my eyes, and I feel myself in that
happy state which precedes a refreshing sleep.
Yonder, opposite the bed, the pale goddess in her drapery of a thousand
changing colors, and with her withered garland, again appears before me;
but this time I hold out my hand to her with a grateful smile.
"Adieu, beloved year! whom I but now unjustly accused. That which I have
suffered must not be laid to thee; for thou wast but a tract through
which God had marked out my road--a ground where I had reaped the harvest
I had sown. I will love thee, thou wayside shelter, for those hours of
happiness thou hast seen me enjoy; I will love thee even for the
suffering thou hast seen me endure. Neither happiness nor suffering came
from thee; but thou hast been the scene for them. Descend again then, in
peace, into eternity, and be blest, thou who hast left me experience in
the place of youth, sweet memories instead of past time, and gratitude as
payment for good offices."
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Ambroise Pare: 'I tend him, God cures him!'
Are we then bound to others only by the enforcement of laws
Attach a sense of remorse to each of my pleasures
But above these ruins rises a calm and happy face
Contemptuous pride of knowledge
Death, that faithful friend of the wretched
Houses are vessels which take mere passengers
I make it a rule never to have any hope
Ignorant of what there is to wish for
Looks on an accomplished duty neither as a merit nor a grievance
More stir than work
Nothing is dishonorable which is useful
Richer than France herself, for I have no deficit in my budget
Satisfy our wants, if we know how to set bounds to them
Sensible man, who has observed much and speaks little
Sullen tempers are excited by the patience of their victims
The happiness of the wise man costs but little
We do not understand that others may live on their own account
What have you done with the days God granted you
You may know the game by the lair
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FROM THE ENTIRE "ATTIC" PHILOSOPHER:
Always to mistake feeling for evidence
Ambroise Pare: 'I tend him, God cures him!'
Are we then bound to others only by the enforcement of laws
Attach a sense of remorse to each of my pleasures
Brought them up to poverty
But above these ruins rises a calm and happy face
Carn-ival means, literally, "farewell to flesh!"
Coffee is the grand work of a bachelor's housekeeping
Contemptuous pride of knowledge
Death, that faithful friend of the wretched
Defeat and victory only displace each other by turns
Did not think the world was so great
Do they understand what makes them so gay?
Each of us regards himself as the mirror of the community
Ease with which the poor forget their wretchedness
Every one keeps his holidays in his own way
Fame and power are gifts that are dearly bought
Favorite and conclusive answer of his class--"I know"
Fear of losing a moment from business
Finishes his sin thoroughly before he begins to repent
Fortune sells what we believe she gives
Her kindness, which never sleeps
Houses are vessels which take mere passengers
Hubbub of questions which waited for no reply
I make it a rule never to have any hope
Ignorant of what there is to wish for
Looks on an accomplished duty neither as a merit nor a grievance
Make himself a name: he becomes public property
Moderation is the great social virtue
More stir than work
My patronage has become her property
No one is so unhappy as to have nothing to give
Not desirous to teach goodness
Nothing is dishonorable which is useful
Our tempers are like an opera-glass
Poverty, you see, is a famous schoolmistress
Power of necessity
Prisoners of work
Progress can never be forced on without danger
Question is not to discover what will suit us
Richer than France herself, for I have no deficit in my budget
Ruining myself, but we must all have our Carnival
Satisfy our wants, if we know how to set bounds to them
Sensible man, who has observed much and speaks little
So much confidence at first, so much doubt at las
Sullen tempers are excited by the patience of their victims
The happiness of the wise man costs but little
The man in power gives up his peace
Two thirds of human existence are wasted in hesitation
Virtue made friends, but she did not take pupils
We do not understand that others may live on their own account
We are not bound to live, while we are bound to do our duty
What have you done with the days God granted you
What a small dwelling joy can live
You may know the game by the lair
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FROM THE COMPLETE "IMMORTALS"
A uniform is the only garb which can hide poverty honorably
A man may forgive, but he never forgets
A mother's geese are always swans
A queen's country is where her throne is
A ripe husband, ready to fall from the tree
A terrible danger lurks in the knowledge of what is possible
A cat is a very fine animal. It is a drawing-room tiger
A familiarity which, had he known it, was not flattering
A defensive attitude is never agreeable to a man
A man weeps with difficulty before a woman
A hero must be human. Napoleon was human
A woman is frank when she does not lie uselessly
A man's life belongs to his duty, and not to his happiness
A man never should kneel unless sure of rising a conqueror
Abundant details which he sometimes volunteered
Accustomed to call its disguise virtue
Accustomed to hide what I think
Adieu, my son, I love you and I die
Adopted fact is always better composed than the real one
Advantage that a calm temper gives one over men
Affectation of indifference
Affection is catching
Ah! the natural perversity of inanimate things
All that a name is to a street--its honor, its spouse
All that was illogical in our social code
All that he said, I had already thought
All that is not life, it is the noise of life
All philosophy is akin to atheism
All babies are round, yielding, weak, timid, and soft
All defeats have their geneses
Always to mistake feeling for evidence
Always smiling condescendingly
Always the first word which is the most difficult to say
Ambiguity has no place, nor has compromise
Ambition is the saddest of all hopes
Ambroise Pare: 'I tend him, God cures him!'
Amusements they offered were either wearisome or repugnant
An hour of rest between two ordeals, a smile between two sobs
Ancient pillars of stone, embrowned and gnawed by time
And I shall say 'damn it,' for I shall then be grown up
And they are shoulders which ought to be seen
And when love is sure of itself and knows response
Anonymous, that velvet mask of scandal-mongers
Answer "No," but with a little kiss which means "Yes"
Antagonism to plutocracy and hatred of aristocrats
Anti-Semitism is making fearful progress everywhere
Antipathy for her husband bordering upon aversion
Are we then bound to others only by the enforcement of laws
Art is the chosen truth
Artificialities of style of that period
Artistic Truth, more lofty than the True
As ignorant as a schoolmaster
As free from prejudices as one may be, one always retains a few
As Homer says, "smiling under tears"
As we grow older we lay aside harsh judgments and sharp words
As regards love, intention and deed are the same
Assume with others the mien they wore toward him
At every step the reality splashes you with mud
Attach a sense of remorse to each of my pleasures
Attractions that difficulties give to pleasure
Attractive abyss of drunkenness
Bad to fear the opinion of people one despises
Bathers, who exhibited themselves in all degrees of ugliness
Because they moved, they thought they were progressing
Because you weep, you fondly imagine yourself innocent
Become corrupt, and you will cease to suffer
Began to forget my own sorrow in my sympathy for her
Believing that it is for virtue's sake alone such men love them
Believing themselves irresistible
Beware of disgust, it is an incurable evil
Blow which annihilates our supreme illusion
Break in his memory, like a book with several leaves torn out
Brilliancy of a fortune too new
Brought them up to poverty
Bullets are not necessarily on the side of the right
But above these ruins rises a calm and happy face
But she thinks she is affording you pleasure
But how avenge one's self on silence?
But if this is our supreme farewell, do not tell me so!
But she will give me nothing but money
Came not in single spies, but in battalions
Camors refused, hesitated, made objections, and consented
Can any one prevent a gossip
Carn-ival means, literally, "farewell to flesh!"
Chain so light yesterday, so heavy to-day
Charm of that one day's rest and its solemnity
Clashing knives and forks mark time
Clumsily, blew his nose, to the great relief of his two arms
Coffee is the grand work of a bachelor's housekeeping
Cold silence, that negative force
Conditions of blindness so voluntary that they become complicity
Confidence in one's self is strength, but it is also weakness
Confounding progress with discord, liberty with license
Conscience is a bad weighing-machine
Conscience is only an affair of environment and of education
Consented to become a wife so as not to remain a maiden
Consoled himself with one of the pious commonplaces
Contempt for men is the beginning of wisdom
Contemptuous pride of knowledge
Contemptuous pity, both for my suspicions and the cause of them
Contrive to use proud disdain as a shield
Convent of Saint Joseph, four shoes under the bed!
Cowardly in trouble as he had been insolent in prosperity
Cried out, with the blunt candor of his age
Curious to know her face of that day
Dangers of liberty outweighed its benefits
Dare now to be silent when I have told you these things
Daylight is detrimental to them
Death is more to be desired than a living distaste for life
Death is not that last sleep
Death, that faithful friend of the wretched
Deeming every sort of occupation beneath him
Defeat and victory only displace each other by turns
Demanded of him imperatively--the time of day
Deny the spirit of self-sacrifice
Despair of a man sick of life, or the whim of a spoiled child
Despotic tone which a woman assumes when sure of her empire
Despotism natural to puissant personalities
Determined to cultivate ability rather than scrupulousness
Did not think the world was so great
Difference which I find between Truth in art and the True in fac
Disappointed her to escape the danger she had feared
Disenchantment which follows possession
Distrust first impulse
Do you think that people have not talked about us?
Do they understand what makes them so gay?
Do they think they have invented what they see
Do not seek too much
Do not get angry. Rarely laugh, and never weep
Does not wish one to treat it with either timidity or brutality
Does one ever forget?
Does one ever possess what one loves?
Doubt, the greatest misery of love
Dreaded the monotonous regularity of conjugal life
Dreams, instead of living
Dreams of wealth and the disasters that immediately followed
Dull hours spent in idle and diffuse conversation
Duty, simply accepted and simply discharged
Each was moved with self-pity
Each had regained freedom, but he did not like to be alone
Each one knows what the other is about to say
Each of us regards himself as the mirror of the community
Ease with which the poor forget their wretchedness
Efforts to arrange matters we succeed often only in disarranging
Egotists and cowards always have a reason for everything
Egyptian tobacco, mixed with opium and saltpetre
Emotion when one does not share it
Enough to be nobody's unless I belong to him
Eternally condemned to kill each other in order to live
Even those who do not love her desire to know her
Every man is his own master in his choice of liaisons
Every one keeps his holidays in his own way
Every one is the best judge of his own affairs
Every road leads to Rome--and one as surely as another
Every cause that is in antagonism with its age commits suicide
Everybody knows about that
Everywhere was feverish excitement, dissipation, and nullity
Evident that the man was above his costume; a rare thing!
Exaggerated dramatic pantomime
Faces taken by surprise allow their real thoughts to be seen
Fame and power are gifts that are dearly bought
Favorite and conclusive answer of his class--"I know"
Fawning duplicity
Fear of losing a moment from business
Felix culpa
Find it more easy to make myself feared than loved
Finishes his sin thoroughly before he begins to repent
First impression is based upon a number of trifles
Flayed and roasted alive by the critics
Follow their thoughts instead of heeding objects
Fool (there is no cure for that infirmity)
Fool who destroys his own happiness
For the rest of his life he would be the prisoner of his crime
Force itself, that mistress of the world
Force, which is the last word of the philosophy of life
Foreigners are more Parisian than the Parisians themselves
Forget a dream and accept a reality
Fortunate enough to keep those one loves
Fortune sells what we believe she gives
Found nothing that answered to my indefinable expectations
Fred's verses were not good, but they were full of dejection
Frenchman has only one real luxury--his revolutions
Friendship exists only in independence and a kind of equality
Fringe which makes an unlovely border to the city
Funeral processions are no longer permitted
Galileo struck the earth, crying: "Nevertheless it moves!"
Gave value to her affability by not squandering it
God forgive the timid and the prattler!
God may have sent him to purgatory just for form's sake
God--or no principles!
Good and bad days succeeded each other almost regularly
Good form consists, above all things, in keeping silent
Great interval between a dream and its execution
Great sorrows neither accuse nor blaspheme--they listen
Great difference between dearly and very much
Grief itself was for her but a means of seducing
Habit turns into a makeshift of attachment
Had not been spoiled by Fortune's gifts
Had not told all--one never does tell all
Hang out the bush, but keep no tavern
Happiness of being pursued
Happiness exists only by snatches and lasts only a moment
Happy men don't need company
Happy is he who does not outlive his youth
Hard that one can not live one's life over twice
Hard workers are pitiful lovers
Has as much sense as the handle of a basket
Hatred of everything which is superior to myself
Have never known in the morning what I would do in the evening
Have not that pleasure, it is useless to incur the penalties
He Would Have Been Forty Now
He always loved to pass for being overwhelmed with work
He almost regretted her
He fixed the time mentally when he would speak
He does not know the miseries of ambition and vanity
He knew now the divine malady of love
He lives only in the body
He did not blush to be a man, and he spoke to men with force
He was very unhappy at being misunderstood
He lost his time, his money, his hair, his illusions
He is charming, for one always feels in danger near him
He does not bear ill-will to those whom he persecutes
He could not imagine that often words are the same as actions
He studied until the last moment
He who is loved by a beautiful woman is sheltered from every blow
He is not intelligent enough to doubt
He led the brilliant and miserable existence of the unoccupied
He did not sleep, so much the better! He would work more
Hearty laughter which men affect to assist digestion
Heed that you lose not in dignity what you gain in revenge
Her husband had become quite bearable
Her kindness, which never sleeps
Hermits can not refrain from inquiring what men say of them
His habit of pleasing had prolonged his youth
His sleeplessness was not the insomnia of genius
History too was a work of art
History is written, not made.
Houses are vessels which take mere passengers
(Housemaid) is trained to respect my disorder
How sad these old memorics are in the autumn
How many things have not people been proud of
How much they desire to be loved who say they love no more
How small a space man occupies on the earth
How rich we find ourselves when we rummage in old drawers
Hubbub of questions which waited for no reply
Human weakness seeks association
Husband who loves you and eats off the same plate is better
Hypocritical grievances
I do not intend either to boast or abase myself
I came here for that express purpose
I do not accept the hypothesis of a world made for us
I don't call that fishing
I measure others by myself
I am not wandering through life, I am marching on
I would give two summers for a single autumn
I believed in the virtue of work, and look at me!
I neither love nor esteem sadness
"I might forgive," said Andras; "but I could not forget"
I believed it all; one is so happy to believe!
I am not in the habit of consulting the law
I have burned all the bridges behind me
I know not what lost home that I have failed to find
I can forget you only when I am with you
I do not desire your friendship
I can not love her, I can not love another
I can not be near you and separated from you at the same moment
I have known things which I know no more
I haven't a taste, I have tastes
I no longer love you
I boasted of being worse than I really was
I thought the best means of being loved were to deserve it
I don't pay myself with words
I have to pay for the happiness you give me
I feel in them (churches) the grandeur of nothingness
I love myself because you love me
I gave myself to him because he loved me
I wished to spoil our past
I make it a rule never to have any hope
Ideas they think superior to love--faith, habits, interests
If there is one! (a paradise)
If I do not give all I give nothing
If well-informed people are to be believe
If trouble awaits us, hope will steal us a happy hour or two
Ignorance into which the Greek clergy plunged the laity
Ignorant of what there is to wish for
Ignorant of everything, undesirous of learning anything
Imagine what it would be never to have been born
Immobility of time
Impatient at praise which was not destined for himself
Implacable self-interest which is the law of the world
Importance in this world are as easily swept away as the sand
In order to make money, the first thing is to have no need of it
In his future arrange laurels for a little crown for your own
In his eyes everything was decided by luck
In times like these we must see all and say all
In what do you believe?
In pitying me he forgot himself
In life it is only nonsense that is common-sense
In every age we laugh at the costume of our fathers
Incapable of conceiving that one might talk without an object
Inconstancy of heart is the special attribute of man
Indignation can solace grief and restore happiness
Indulgence of which they stand in need themselves
Inoffensive tree which never had harmed anybody
Insanity is, perhaps, simply the ideal realized
Intelligent persons have no remorse
Intemperance of her zeal and the acrimony of her bigotry
Intimate friend, whom he has known for about five minutes
Irritating laugh which is peculiar to Japan
Is it not enough to have lived?
Is he a dwarf or a giant
Is a man ever poor when he has two arms?
Is it by law only that you wish to keep me?
It is a pity that you must seek pastimes
It is not now what it used to be
It is silly to blush under certain circumstances
It is too true that virtue also has its blush
It was a relief when they rose from the table
It is an error to be in the right too soon
It was torture for her not to be able to rejoin him
It was all delightfully terrible!
It was too late: she did not wish to win
It (science) dreams, too; it supposes
It is a terrible step for a woman to take, from No to Yes
It is so good to know nothing, nothing, nothing
It is only those who own something who worry about the price
It does not mend matters to give way like that
It is the first crime that costs
Japanese habit of expressing myself with excessive politeness
Jealous without having the right to be jealous
Kissses and caresses are the effort of a delightful despair
Knew her danger, and, unlike most of them, she did not love it
Knew that life is not worth so much anxiety nor so much hope
Lady who requires urging, although she is dying to sing
Laughing in every wrinkle of his face
Leant--and when I did not lose my friends I lost my money
Learn to live without desire
Learned that one leaves college almost ignorant
Learned to love others by embracing their own children
Leisure must be had for light reading, and even more for love
Lends--I should say gives
Let us give to men irony and pity as witnesses and judges
Let them laugh that win!
Let ultra-modesty destroy poetry
Let the dead past bury its dead!
Life is made up of just such trifles
Life as a whole is too vast and too remote
Life goes on, and that is less gay than the stories
Life is not a great thing
Life is not so sweet for us to risk ourselves in it singlehanded
Life is a tempest
Like all timid persons, he took refuge in a moody silence
Little feathers fluttering for an opportunity to fly away
Little that we can do when we are powerful
Lofty ideal of woman and of love
Looking for a needle in a bundle of hay
Looks on an accomplished duty neither as a merit nor a grievance
Love in marriage is, as a rule, too much at his ease
Love is a fire whose heat dies out for want of fuel
Love was only a brief intoxication
Love and tranquillity seldom dwell at peace in the same heart
Love is a soft and terrible force, more powerful than beauty
Lovers never separate kindly
Made life give all it could yield
Magnificent air of those beggars of whom small towns are proud
Make himself a name: he becomes public property
Make a shroud of your virtue in which to bury your crimes
Make for themselves a horizon of the neighboring walls and roofs
Man who expects nothing of life except its ending
Man who suffers wishes to make her whom he loves suffer
Man, if he will it, need not grow old: the lion must
Man is but one of the links of an immense chain
Mania for fearing that she may be compromised
Material in you to make one of Cooper's redskins
Mediocre sensibility
Melancholy problem of the birth and death of love
Men of pleasure remain all their lives mediocre workers
Men are weak, and there are things which women must accomplish
Men admired her; the women sought some point to criticise
Men forget sooner
Men doubted everything: the young men denied everything
Mild, unpretentious men who let everybody run over them
Miserable beings who contribute to the grandeur of the past
Misfortunes never come single
Mobile and complaisant conscience had already forgiven himself
Moderation is the great social virtue
Money troubles are not mortal
Money is not a common thing between gentlemen like you and me
Monsieur, I know that I have lived too long
More disposed to discover evil than good
More stir than work
Music--so often dangerous to married happiness
My aunt is jealous of me because I am a man of ideas
My good fellow, you are quite worthless as a man of pleasure
My patronage has become her property
Natural longing, that we all have, to know the worst
Natural only when alone, and talk well only to themselves
Nature's cold indifference to our sufferings
Negroes, all but monkeys!
Neither so simple nor so easy as they at first appeared
Neither idealist nor realist
Nervous natures, as prompt to hope as to despair
Never interfered in what did not concern him
Never can make revolutions with gloves on
Never foolish to spend money. The folly lies in keeping it
Never is perfect happiness our lot
Never travel when the heart is troubled!
No answer to make to one who has no right to question me
No longer esteemed her highly enough to be jealous of her
No one has ever been able to find out what her thoughts were
No woman is unattainable, except when she loves another
No flies enter a closed mouth
No one is so unhappy as to have nothing to give
No writer had more dislike of mere pedantry
Nobody troubled himself about that originality
None but fools resisted the current
Not everything is known, but everything is said
Not only his last love, but his only love
Not more honest than necessary
Not desirous to teach goodness
Not an excuse, but an explanation of your conduct
Nothing is dishonorable which is useful
Nothing is so legitimate, so human, as to deceive pain
Nothing that provokes laughter more than a disappointed lover
Nothing ever astonishes me
Notion of her husband's having an opinion of his own
Now his grief was his wife, and lived with him
Obstacles are the salt of all our joys
Obstinacy of drunkenness
Of all the sisters of love, the most beautiful is pity
Offices will end by rendering great names vile
Often been compared to Eugene Sue, but his touch is lighter
Old women--at least thirty years old!
Once an excellent remedy, is a detestable regimen
One who first thought of pasting a canvas on a panel
One of those beings who die, as they have lived, children
One is never kind when one is in love
One half of his life belonged to the poor
One would think that the wind would put them out: the stars
One of those pious persons who always think evil
One of those trustful men who did not judge when they loved
One does not judge those whom one loves
One should never leave the one whom one loves
One may think of marrying, but one ought not to try to marry
One amuses one's self at the risk of dying
One doesn't offer apologies to a man in his wrath
Only a man, wavering and changeable
Only one thing infamous in love, and that is a falsehood
Opposing his orders with steady, irritating inertia
Ordinary, trivial, every-day objects
Ostensibly you sit at the feast without paying the cost
Others found delight in the most ordinary amusements
Our tempers are like an opera-glass
Paint from nature
Paris has become like a little country town in its gossip
Pass half the day in procuring two cakes, worth three sous
Patience, should he encounter a dull page here or there
People meeting to "have it out" usually say nothing at first
People whose principle was never to pay a doctor
Perfection does not exist
Pessimism of to-day sneering at his confidence of yesterday
Picturesquely ugly
Pitiful checker-board of life
Playing checkers, that mimic warfare of old men
Plead the lie to get at the truth
Pleasures of an independent code of morals
Police regulations known as religion
Poor France of Jeanne d'Arc and of Napoleon
Poverty brings wrinkles
Poverty, you see, is a famous schoolmistress
Power to work, that was never disturbed or weakened by anything
Power of necessity
Prayers swallowed like pills by invalids at a distance
Pride supplies some sufferers with necessary courage
Princes ought never to be struck, except on the head
Princesses ceded like a town, and must not even weep
Principle that art implied selection
Principles alone, without faith in some higher sanction
Prisoners of work
Progress can never be forced on without danger
Property of all who are strong enough to stand it
Pure caprice that I myself mistook for a flash of reason
Put herself on good terms with God, in case He should exist
Quarrel had been, so to speak, less sad than our reconciliation
Question is not to discover what will suit us
Rather do not give--make yourself sought after
Reading the Memoirs of Constant
Reason before the deed, and not after
Recesses of her mind which she preferred not to open
Reckon yourself happy if in your husband you find a lover
Recollection of past dangers to increase the present joy
Recommended a scrupulous observance of nature
Recourse to concessions is often as fatal to women as to kings
Redouble their boasting after each defeat
Regards his happiness as a proof of superiority
Relatives whom she did not know and who irritated her
Remedy infallible against the plague and against reserve
Repeated and explained what he had already said and explained
Reproaches are useless and cruel if the evil is done
Resorted to exaggeration in order to appear original
Respect him so that he may respect you
Richer than France herself, for I have no deficit in my budget
Romanticism still ferments beneath the varnish of Naturalism
Ruining myself, but we must all have our Carnival
Sacrifice his artistic leanings to popular caprice
Satisfy our wants, if we know how to set bounds to them
Scarcely a shade of gentle condescension
Scarcely was one scheme launched when another idea occurred
Sceptic regrets the faith he has lost the power to regain
Seeking for a change which can no longer be found
Seemed to enjoy themselves, or made believe they did
Seemed to him that men were grains in a coffee-mill
Seldom troubled himself to please any one he did not care for
Semel insanivimus omnes.' (every one has his madness)
Sensible man, who has observed much and speaks little
Sensitiveness and disposition to self-blame
Seven who are always the same: the first is called hope
She pretended to hope for the best
She said yes, so as not to say no
She is happy, since she likes to remember
She was of those who disdain no compliment
She pleased society by appearing to find pleasure in it
She would have liked the world to be in mourning
She could not bear contempt
Shelter himself in the arms of the weak and recover courage
Should be punished for not having known how to punish
Should like better to do an immoral thing than a cruel one
Silence, alas! is not the reproof of kings alone
Simple people who doubt neither themselves nor others
Since she was in love, she had lost prudence
Skilful actor, who apes all the emotions while feeling none
Slip forth from the common herd, my son, think for yourself
Small women ought not to grow stout
So much confidence at first, so much doubt at las
So well satisfied with his reply that he repeated it twice
So strongly does force impose upon men
Society people condemned to hypocrisy and falsehood
Sometimes we seem to enjoy unhappiness
Sometimes like to deck the future in the garments of the past
Sorrows shrink into insignificance as the horizon broadens
Speak to me of your love, she said, "not of your grief"
St. Augustine
Succeeded in wearying him by her importunities and tenderness
Such artificial enjoyment, such idiotic laughter
Suffered, and yet took pleasure in it
Sufferer becomes, as it were, enamored of his own agony
Suffering is a human law; the world is an arena
Sufficed him to conceive the plan of a reparation
Sullen tempers are excited by the patience of their victims
Superior men sometimes lack cleverness
Superiority of the man who does nothing over the man who works
Superstition which forbids one to proclaim his happiness
Surprise goes for so much in what we admire
Suspicion that he is a feeble human creature after all!
Suspicions that are ever born anew
Sympathetic listening, never having herself anything to say
Take their levity for heroism
Taken the times as they are
Talk with me sometimes. You will not chatter trivialities
Tears for the future
Tediousness seems to ooze out through their bindings
Terrible words; I deserve them, but they will kill me
Terrible revenge she would take hereafter for her sufferings
That suffering which curses but does not pardon
That you can aid them in leading better lives?
That if we live the reason is that we hope
That sort of cold charity which is called altruism
That absurd and generous fury for ownership
The bandage love ties over the eyes of men
The future promises, it is the present that pays
The discouragement which the irreparable gives
The heart requires gradual changes
The future that is rent away
The most radical breviary of scepticism since Montaigne
The door of one's room opens on the infinite
The very smell of books is improving
The looks of the young are always full of the future
The recollection of that moment lasts for a lifetime
The worst husband is always better than none
The past is the only human reality--Everything that is, is past
The man in power gives up his peace
The happiness of the wise man costs but little
The history of good people is often monotonous or painful
The one whom you will love and who will love you will harm you
The women have enough religion for the men
The violent pleasure of losing
The poor must pay for all their enjoyments
The great leveller has swung a long scythe over France
The real support of a government is the Opposition
The politician never should be in advance of circumstances
The uncontested power which money brings
The strong walk alone because they need no one
The leaves fall! the leaves fall!
The guilty will not feel your blows, but the innocent
The forests have taught man liberty
The ease with which he is forgotten
The Hungarian was created on horseback
The most in favor will be the soonest abandoned by him
The usual remarks prompted by imbecility on such occasions
The night brings counsel
The sincere age when one thinks aloud
The groom isn't handsome, but the bride's as pretty as a picture
Their Christian charity did not extend so far as that
Their love requires a return
There are many grand and strong things which you do not feel
There is an intelligent man, who never questions his ideas
There are some men who never have had any childhood
There were too many discussions, and not enough action
There are mountains that we never climb but once
There are pious falsehoods which the Church excuses
There is always and everywhere a duty to fulfil
There is nothing good except to ignore and to forget
There are some blunders that are lucky; but you can't tell
There will be no more belief in Christ than in Jupiter
There are two different men in you
These are things that one admits only to himself
These ideas may serve as opium to produce a calm
They tremble while they threaten
They loved not as you love, eh?
They had only one aim, one passion--to enjoy themselves
They are the coffin saying: 'I am the cradle'
They have believed me incapable because I was kind
Thinking it better not to lie on minor points
This popular favor is a cup one must drink
This was the Dauphin, afterward Louis XIV
This unending warfare we call love
Those whom they most amuse are those who are best worth amusing
Those who have outlived their illusions
Ticking of which (our arteries) can be heard only at night
Ties that unite children to parents are unloosed
Ties that become duties where we only sought pleasures
Ties which unite parents to children are broken
Timidity of a night-bird that is made to fly in the day
Tired smile of those who have not long to live
To make a will is to put one foot into the grave
To learn to obey is the only way of learning to command
To love is a great deal--To know how to love is everything
To be able to smoke a cigar without being sick
To be beautiful, must a woman have that thin form
To be your own guide doubles your pleasure
Toast and white wine (for breakfast)
Too prudent to risk or gain much
Topics that occupy people who meet for the first time
Trees, dwarfed by a Japanese process
Trees are like men; there are some that have no luck
True talent paints life rather than the living
Truth is easily found. I shall read all the newspapers
Truth, I here venture to distinguish from that of the True
Trying to conceal by a smile (a blush)
Trying to make Therese admire what she did not know
Two persons who desired neither to remember nor to forget
Two thirds of human existence are wasted in hesitation
Umbrellas, like black turtles under the watery skies
Unable to speak, for each word would have been a sob
Unfortunate creature who is the plaything of life
"Unhappy man!" she cried, "you will never know how to love"
Universal suffrage, with its accustomed intelligence
Unqualified for happiness
Unwilling to leave him to the repose he needed
Upon my word, there are no ugly ones (women)
Urbain Grandier
Vague hope came over him that all would come right
Very young, and was in love with love
Vexed, act in direct contradiction to their own wishes
Virtue made friends, but she did not take pupils
Voice of the heart which alone has power to reach the heart
Void in her heart, a place made ready for disasters to come
Walked at the rapid pace characteristic of monomaniacs
Was I not warned enough of the sadness of everything?
Waste all that upon a thing that nobody will ever look at
We are too happy; we are robbing life
We had taken the dream of a day for eternal happiness
We weep, we do not complain
We are so unhappy that our souls are weak against joy
We have had a mass celebrated, and it cost us a large sum
We are not bound to live, while we are bound to do our duty
We do not understand that others may live on their own account
We are simple to this degree, that we do not think we are
Were certain against all reason
What is a man who remains useless
What will be the use of having tormented ourselves in this world
What use is the memory of facts, if not to serve as an example
What you take for love is nothing more than desire
What matters it how much we suffer
What human word will ever express thy slightest caress
What have you done with the days God granted you
What a small dwelling joy can live
When passion sways man, reason follows him weeping and warning
When one speaks of the devil he appears
When he sings, it is because he has something to sing about
When the inattentive spirits are not listening
When time has softened your grief
Whether they know or do not know, they talk
Whether in this world one must be a fanatic or nothing
Which I should find amusing in any one else,--any one I loved
Who has told you that tears can wash away the stains of guilt
Whole world of politics and religion rushed to extremes
Why should I read the newspapers?
Why mankind has chosen to call marriage a man-trap
Will not admit that conscience is the proper guide of our action
Willingly seek a new sorrow
Wine suffuses the face as if to prevent shame appearing there
Wiped his nose behind his hat, like a well-bred orator
Wiping his forehead ostentatiously
With the habit of thinking, had not lost the habit of laughing
Without a care or a cross, he grew weary like a prisoner
Woman is more bitter than death, and her arms are like chains
Women who are thirty-five should never weep
Women: they are more bitter than death
Women do not always confess it, but it is always their fault
Word "sacrifice," so vague on careless lips
Words are nothing; it is the tone in which they are uttered
Would not be astonished at anything
Would have liked him to be blind only so far as he was concerned
Yes, we are in the way here
Yield to their customs, and not pooh-pooh their amusements
You are in a conquered country, which is still more dangerous
You play with happiness as a child plays with a rattle
You love me, therefore you do not know me
You have considerable patience for a lover
You are talking too much about it to be sincere
You can not make an omelette without first breaking the eggs
You must be pleased with yourself--that is more essential
You are playing 'who loses wins!'
You suffer? Is fate so just as that
You ask Life for certainties, as if she had any to give you
You must always first get the tobacco to burn evenly
You a law student, while our farmers are in want of hands
You believe in what is said here below and not in what is done
You turn the leaves of dead books
You must take me with my own soul!
You may know the game by the lair
Your great weapon is silence
Youth is to judge of the world from first impressions