Compare a fete champetre of the good old style with the village festivals, so-called, of to-day. In the one case, in the honored setting of antique costumes, genuine countrymen sing the folk songs, dance rustic dances, regale themselves with native drinks, and seem entirely in their element. They take their pleasure as the blacksmith forges, as the cascade tumbles over the rocks, as the colts frisk in the meadows. It is contagious: it stirs your heart. In spite of yourself you are ready to cry: "Bravo, my children. That is fine!" You want to join in. In the other case, you see villagers disguised as city folk, countrywomen made hideous by the modiste, and, as the chief ornament of the festival, a lot of degenerates who bawl the songs of music halls; and sometimes in the place of honor, a group of tenth-rate barnstormers, imported for the occasion, to civilize these rustics and give them a taste of refined pleasures. For drinks, liquors mixed with brandy or absinthe: in the whole thing neither originality nor picturesqueness. License, indeed, and clownishness, but not that abandon which ingenuous joy brings in its train.

* * * * *

This question of pleasure is capital. Staid people generally neglect it as a frivolity; utilitarians, as a costly superfluity. Those whom we designate as pleasure-seekers forage in this delicate domain like wild boars in a garden. No one seems to doubt the immense human interest attached to joy. It is a sacred flame that must be fed, and that throws a splendid radiance over life. He who takes pains to foster it accomplishes a work as profitable for humanity as he who builds bridges, pierces tunnels, or cultivates the ground. So to order one's life as to keep, amid toils and suffering, the faculty of happiness, and be able to propagate it in a sort of salutary contagion among one's fellow-men, is to do a work of fraternity in the noblest sense. To give a trifling pleasure, smooth an anxious brow, bring a little light into dark paths—what a truly divine office in the midst of this poor humanity! But it is only in great simplicity of heart that one succeeds in filling it.

We are not simple enough to be happy and to render others so. We lack the singleness of heart and the self-forgetfulness. We spread joy, as we do consolation, by such methods as to obtain negative results. To console a person, what do we do? We set to work to dispute his suffering, persuade him that he is mistaken in thinking himself unhappy. In reality, our language translated into truthful speech would amount to this: "You suffer, my friend? That is strange; you must be mistaken, for I feel nothing." As the only human means of soothing grief is to share it in the heart, how must a sufferer feel, consoled in this fashion?

To divert our neighbor, make him pass an agreeable hour, we set out in the same way. We invite him to admire our versatility, to laugh at our wit, to frequent our house, to sit at our table; through it all, our desire to shine breaks forth. Sometimes, also, with a patron's prodigality, we offer him the beneficence of a public entertainment of our own choosing, unless we ask him to find amusement at our home, as we sometimes do to make up a party at cards, with the arriere-pensee of exploiting him to our own profit. Do you think it the height of pleasure for others to admire us, to admit our superiority, and to act as our tools? Is there anything in the world so disgusting as to feel one's self patronized, made capital of, enrolled in a claque? To give pleasure to others and take it ourselves, we have to begin by removing the ego, which is hateful, and then keep it in chains as long as the diversions last. There is no worse kill-joy than the ego. We must be good children, sweet and kind, button our coats over our medals and titles, and with our whole heart put ourselves at the disposal of others.

Let us sometimes live—be it only for an hour, and though we must lay all else aside—to make others smile. The sacrifice is only in appearance; no one finds more pleasure for himself than he who knows how, without ostentation, to give himself that he may procure for those around him a moment of forgetfulness and happiness.

When shall we be so simply and truly men as not to obtrude our personal business and distresses upon the people we meet socially? May we not forget for an hour our pretensions, our strife, our distributions into sets and cliques—in short, our "parts," and become as children once more, to laugh again that good laugh which does so much to make the world better?

* * * * *

Here I feel drawn to speak of something very particular, and in so doing to offer my well-disposed readers an opportunity to go about a splendid business. I want to call their attention to several classes of people seldom thought of with reference to their pleasures.

It is understood that a broom serves only to sweep, a watering-pot to water plants, a coffee-mill to grind coffee, and likewise it is supposed that a nurse is designed only to care for the sick, a professor to teach, a priest to preach, bury, and confess, a sentinel to mount guard; and the conclusion is drawn that the people given up to the more serious business of life are dedicated to labor, like the ox. Amusement is incompatible with their activities. Pushing this view still further, we think ourselves warranted in believing that the infirm, the afflicted, the bankrupt, the vanquished in life's battle, and all those who carry heavy burdens, are in the shade, like the northern slopes of mountains, and that it is so of necessity. Whence the conclusion that serious people have no need of pleasure, and that to offer it to them would be unseemly; while as to the afflicted, there would be a lack of delicacy in breaking the thread of their sad meditations. It seems therefore to be understood that certain persons are condemned to be always serious, that we should approach them in a serious frame of mind, and talk to them only of serious things: so, too, when we visit the sick or unfortunate; we should leave our smiles at the door, compose our face and manner to dolefulness, and talk of anything heartrending. Thus we carry darkness to those in darkness, shade to those in shade. We increase the isolation of solitary lives and the monotony of the dull and sad. We wall up some existences as it were in dungeons; and because the grass grows round their deserted prison-house, we speak low in approaching it, as though it were a tomb. Who suspects the work of infernal cruelty which is thus accomplished every day in the world! This ought not to be.

When you find men or women whose lives are lost in hard tasks, or in the painful office of seeking out human wretchedness and binding up wounds, remember that they are beings made like you, that they have the same wants, that there are hours when they need pleasure and diversion. You will not turn them aside from their mission by making them laugh occasionally—these people who see so many tears and griefs; on the contrary, you will give them strength to go on the better with their work.

And when people whom you know are in trial, do not draw a sanitary cordon round them—as though they had the plague—that you cross only with precautions which recall to them their sad lot. On the contrary, after showing all your sympathy, all your respect for their grief, comfort them, help them to take up life again; carry them a breath from the out-of-doors—something in short to remind them that their misfortune does not shut them off from the world.

And so extend your sympathy to those whose work quite absorbs them, who are, so to put it, tied down. The world is full of men and women sacrificed to others, who never have either rest or pleasure, and to whom the least relaxation, the slightest respite, is a priceless good. And this minimum of comfort could be so easily found for them if only we thought of it. But the broom, you know, is made for sweeping, and it seems as though it could not be fatigued. Let us rid ourselves of this criminal blindness which prevents us from seeing the exhaustion of those who are always in the breach. Relieve the sentinels perishing at their posts, give Sisyphus an hour to breathe; take for a moment the place of the mother, a slave to the cares of her house and her children; sacrifice an hour of our sleep for someone worn by long vigils with the sick. Young girl, tired sometimes perhaps of your walk with your governess, take the cook's apron, and give her the key to the fields. You will at once make others happy and be happy yourself. We go unconcernedly along beside our brothers who are bent under burdens we might take upon ourselves for a minute. And this short respite would suffice to soothe aches, revive the flame of joy in many a heart, and open up a wide place for brotherliness. How much better would one understand another if he knew how to put himself heartily in that other's place, and how much more pleasure there would be in life!

* * * * *

I have spoken too fully elsewhere of systematizing amusements for the young, to return to it here in detail.[B] But I wish to say in substance what cannot be too often repeated: If you wish youth to be moral, do not neglect its pleasures, or leave to chance the task of providing them. You will perhaps say that young people do not like to have their amusements submitted to regulations, and that besides, in our day, they are already over-spoiled and divert themselves only too much. I shall reply, first, that one may suggest ideas, indicate directions, offer opportunities for amusement, without making any regulations whatever. In the second place, I shall make you see that you deceive yourselves in thinking youth has too much diversion. Aside from amusements that are artificial, enervating and immoral, that blight life instead of making it bloom in splendor, there are very few left to-day. Abuse, that enemy of legitimate use, has so befouled the world, that it is becoming difficult to touch anything but what is unclean: whence watchfulness, warnings and endless prohibitions. One can hardly stir without encountering something that resembles unhealthy pleasure. Among young people of to-day, particularly the self-respecting, the dearth of amusements causes real suffering. One is not weaned from this generous wine without discomfort. Impossible to prolong this state of affairs without deepening the shadow round the heads of the younger generations. We must come to their aid. Our children are heirs of a joyless world. We bequeath them cares, hard questions, a life heavy with shackles and complexities. Let us at least make an effort to brighten the morning of their days. Let us interest ourselves in their sports, find them pleasure-grounds, open to them our hearts and our homes. Let us bring the family into our amusements. Let gayety cease to be a commodity of export. Let us call in our sons, whom our gloomy interiors send out into the street, and our daughters, moping in dismal solitude. Let us multiply anniversaries, family parties, and excursions. Let us raise good humor in our homes to the height of an institution. Let the schools, too, do their part. Let masters and students—school-boys and college-boys—meet together oftener for amusement. It will be so much the better for serious work. There is no such aid to understanding one's professor as to have laughed in his company; and conversely, to be well understood a pupil must be met elsewhere than in class or examination.

And who will furnish the money? What a question! That is exactly the error. Pleasure and money: people take them for the two wings of the same bird! A gross illusion! Pleasure, like all other truly precious things in this world, cannot be bought or sold. If you wish to be amused, you must do your part toward it; that is the essential. There is no prohibition against opening your purse, if you can do it, and find it desirable. But I assure you it is not indispensable. Pleasure and simplicity are two old acquaintances. Entertain simply, meet your friends simply. If you come from work well done, are as amiable and genuine as possible toward your companions, and speak no evil of the absent, your success is sure.

[B] See "Youth," the chapter on "Joy."



VIII

THE MERCENARY SPIRIT AND SIMPLICITY

We have in passing touched upon a certain wide-spread prejudice which attributes to money a magic power. Having come so near enchanted ground we will not retire in awe, but plant a firm foot here, persuaded of many truths that should be spoken. They are not new, but how they are forgotten!

I see no possible way of doing without money. The only thing that theorists or legislators who accuse it of all our ills have hitherto achieved, has been to change its name or form. But they have never been able to dispense with a symbol representative of the commercial value of things. One might as well wish to do away with written language as to do away with money. Nevertheless, this question of a circulating medium is very troublesome. It forms one of the chief elements of complication in our life. The economic difficulties amid which we still flounder, social conventionalities, and the entire organization of modern life, have carried gold to a rank so eminent that it is not astonishing to find the imagination of man attributing to it a sort of royalty. And it is on this side that we shall attack the problem.

The term money has for appendage that of merchandise. If there were no merchandise there would be no money; but as long as there is merchandise there will be money, little matter under what form. The source of all the abuses which centre around money lies in a lack of discrimination. People have confused under the term and idea of merchandise, things which have no relation with one another. They have attempted to give a venal value to things which neither could have it nor ought to. The idea of purchase and sale has invaded ground where it may justly be considered an enemy and a usurper. It is reasonable that wheat, potatoes, wine, fabrics, should be bought and sold, and it is perfectly natural that a man's labor procure him rights to life, and that there be put into his hands something whose value represents them; but here already the analogy ceases to be complete. A man's labor is not merchandise in the same sense as a sack of flour or a ton of coal. Into this labor enter elements which cannot be valued in money. In short, there are things which can in no wise be bought: sleep, for instance, knowledge of the future, talent. He who offers them for sale must be considered a fool or an impostor. And yet there are gentlemen who coin money by such traffic. They sell what does not belong to them, and their dupes pay fictitious values in veritable coin. So, too, there are dealers in pleasure, dealers in love, dealers in miracles, dealers in patriotism, and the title of merchant, so honorable when it represents a man selling that which is in truth a commodity of trade, becomes the worst of stigmas when there is question of the heart, of religion, of country.

Almost all men are agreed that to barter with one's sentiments, his honor, his cloth, his pen, or his note, is infamous. Unfortunately this idea, which suffers no contradiction as a theory, and which thus stated seems rather a commonplace than a high moral truth, has infinite trouble to make its way in practice. Traffic has invaded the world. The money-changers are established even in the sanctuary, and by sanctuary I do not mean religious things alone, but whatever mankind holds sacred and inviolable. It is not gold that complicates, corrupts, and debases life; it is our mercenary spirit.

The mercenary spirit resolves everything into a single question: How much is that going to bring me? and sums up everything in a single axiom: With money you can procure anything. Following these two principles of conduct, a society may descend to a degree of infamy impossible to describe or to imagine.

How much is it going to bring me? This question, so legitimate while it concerns those precautions which each ought to take to assure his subsistence by his labor, becomes pernicious as soon as it passes its limits and dominates the whole life. This is so true that it vitiates even the toil which gains our daily bread. I furnish paid labor; nothing could be better: but if to inspire me in this labor I have only the desire to get the pay, nothing could be worse. A man whose only motive for action is his wages, does a bad piece of work: what interests him is not the doing, it's the gold. If he can retrench in pains without lessening his gains, be assured that he will do it. Plowman, mason, factory laborer, he who loves not his work puts into it neither interest nor dignity—is, in short, a bad workman. It is not well to confide one's life to a doctor who is wholly engrossed in his fees, for the spring of his action is the desire to garnish his purse with the contents of yours. If it is for his interest that you should suffer longer, he is capable of fostering your malady instead of fortifying your strength. The instructor of children who cares for his work only so far as it brings him profit, is a sad teacher; for his pay is indifferent, and his teaching more indifferent still. Of what value is the mercenary journalist? The day you write for the dollar, your prose is not worth the dollar you write for. The more elevated in kind is the object of human labor, the more the mercenary spirit, if it be present, makes this labor void and corrupts it. There are a thousand reasons to say that all toil merits its wage, that every man who devotes his energies to providing for his life should have his place in the sun, and that he who does nothing useful, does not gain his livelihood, in short, is only a parasite. But there is no greater social error than to make gain the sole motive of action. The best we put into our work—be that work done by strength of muscle, warmth of heart, or concentration of mind—is precisely that for which no one can pay us. Nothing better proves that man is not a machine than this fact: two men at work with the same forces and the same movements, produce totally different results. Where lies the cause of this phenomenon? In the divergence of their intentions. One has the mercenary spirit, the other has singleness of purpose. Both receive their pay, but the labor of the one is barren; the other has put his soul into his work. The work of the first is like a grain of sand, out of which nothing comes through all eternity; the other's work is like the living seed thrown into the ground; it germinates and brings forth harvests. This is the secret which explains why so many people have failed while employing the very processes by which others succeed. Automatons do not reproduce their kind, and mercenary labor yields no fruit.

* * * * *

Unquestionably we must bow before economic facts, and recognize the difficulties of living: from day to day it becomes more imperative to combine well one's forces in order to succeed in feeding, clothing, housing, and bringing up a family. He who does not rightly take account of these crying necessities, who makes no calculation, no provision for the future, is but a visionary or an incompetent, and runs the risk of sooner or later asking alms from those at whose parsimony he has sneered. And yet, what would become of us if these cares absorbed us entirely? if, mere accountants, we should wish to measure our effort by the money it brings, do nothing that does not end in a receipt, and consider as things worthless or pains lost whatever cannot be drawn up in figures on the pages of a ledger? Did our mothers look for pay in loving us and caring for us? What would become of filial piety if we asked it for loving and caring for our aged parents?

What does it cost you to speak the truth? Misunderstandings, sometimes sufferings and persecutions. To defend your country? Weariness, wounds and often death. To do good? Annoyance, ingratitude, even resentment. Self-sacrifice enters into all the essential actions of humanity. I defy the closest calculators to maintain their position in the world without ever appealing to aught but their calculations. True, those who know how to make their "pile" are rated as men of ability. But look a little closer. How much of it do they owe to the unselfishness of the simple-hearted? Would they have succeeded had they met only shrewd men of their own sort, having for device: "No money, no service?" Let us be outspoken; it is due to certain people who do not count too rigorously, that the world gets on. The most beautiful acts of service and the hardest tasks have generally little remuneration or none. Fortunately there are always men ready for unselfish deeds; and even for those paid only in suffering, though they cost gold, peace, and even life. The part these men play is often painful and discouraging. Who of us has not heard recitals of experiences wherein the narrator regretted some past kindness he had done, some trouble he had taken, to have nothing but vexation in return? These confidences generally end thus: "It was folly to do the thing!" Sometimes it is right so to judge; for it is always a mistake to cast pearls before swine; but how many lives there are whose sole acts of real beauty are these very ones of which the doers repent because of men's ingratitude! Our wish for humanity is that the number of these foolish deeds may go on increasing.

* * * * *

And now I arrive at the credo of the mercenary spirit. It is characterized by brevity. For the mercenary man, the law and the prophets are contained in this one axiom: With money you can get anything. From a surface view of our social life, nothing seems more evident. "The sinews of war," "the shining mark," "the key that opens all doors," "king money!"—If one gathered up all the sayings about the glory and power of gold, he could make a litany longer than that which is chanted in honor of the Virgin. You must be without a penny, if only for a day or two, and try to live in this world of ours, to have any idea of the needs of him whose purse is empty. I invite those who love contrasts and unforeseen situations, to attempt to live without money three days, and far from their friends and acquaintances—in short, far from the society in which they are somebody. They will gain more experience in forty-eight hours than in a year otherwise. Alas for some people! they have this experience thrust upon them, and when veritable ruin descends around their heads, it is useless to remain in their own country, among the companions of their youth, their former colleagues, even those indebted to them. People affect to know them no longer. With what bitterness do they comment on the creed of money:—With gold one may have what he will; without it, impossible to have anything! They become pariahs, lepers, whom everyone shuns. Flies swarm round cadavers, men round gold. Take away the gold, nobody is there. Oh, it has caused tears to flow, this creed of gain! bitter tears, tears of blood, even from those very eyes which once adored the golden calf.

And with it all, this creed is false, quite false. I shall not advance to the attack with hackneyed tales of the rich man astray in a desert, who cannot get even a drop of water for his gold; or the decrepit millionaire who would give half he has to buy from a stalwart fellow without a cent, his twenty years and his lusty health. No more shall I attempt to prove that one cannot buy happiness. So many people who have money and so many more who have not would smile at this truth as the hardest ridden of saws. But I shall appeal to the common experience of each of you, to make you put your finger on the clumsy lie hidden beneath an axiom that all the world goes about repeating.

Fill your purse to the best of your means, and let us set out for one of the watering-places of which there are so many. I mean some little town formerly unknown and full of simple folk, respectful and hospitable, among whom it was good to be, and cost little. Fame with her hundred trumpets has announced them to the world, and shown them how they can profit from their situation, their climate, their personality. You start out, on the faith of Dame Rumor, flattering yourself that with your money you are going to find a quiet place to rest, and, far from the world of civilization and convention, weave a bit of poetry into the warp of your days.

The beginning is good. Nature's setting and some patriarchal costumes, slow to disappear, delight you. But as time passes, the impression is spoiled. The reverse side of things begins to show. This which you thought was as true antique as family heirlooms, is naught but trickery to mystify the credulous. Everything is labeled, all is for sale, from the earth to the inhabitants. These primitives have become the most consummate of sharpers. Given your money, they have resolved the problem of getting it with the least expense to themselves. On all sides are nets and traps, like spider-webs, and the fly that this gentry lies snugly in wait for is you. This is what twenty or thirty years of venality has done for a population once simple and honest, whose contact was grateful indeed to men worn by city life. Home-made bread has disappeared, butter comes from the dealer, they know to an art how to skim milk and adulterate wine; they have all the vices of dwellers in cities without their virtues.

As you leave, you count your money. So much is wanting, that you make complaint. You are wrong. One never pays too dear for the conviction that there are things which money will not buy.

You have need in your house of an intelligent and competent servant: attempt to find this rara avis. According to the principle that with money one may get anything, you ought, as the position you offer is inferior, ordinary, good, or exceptional, to find servants unskilled, average, excellent, superior. But all those who present themselves for the vacant post are listed in the last category, and are fortified with certificates to support their pretensions. It is true that nine times out of ten, when put to the test, these experts are found totally wanting. Then why did they engage themselves with you? They ought in truth to reply as does the cook in the comedy, who is dearly paid and proves to know nothing.

"Why did you hire out as a cordon bleu? It was to get bigger commissions."

That is the great affair. You will always find people who like to get big wages. More rarely you find capability. And if you are looking for probity, the difficulty increases. Mercenaries may be had for the asking; faithfulness is another thing. Far be it from me to deny the existence of faithful servants, at once intelligent and upright. But you will encounter as many, if not more, among the illy paid as among those most highly salaried. And it little matters where you find them, you may be sure that they are not faithful in their own interest; they are faithful because they have somewhat of that simplicity which renders us capable of self-abnegation.

We also hear on all sides the adage that money is the sinews of war. There is no question but that war costs much money, and we know something about it. Does this mean that in order to defend herself against her enemies and to honor her flag, a country need only be rich? In olden time the Greeks took it upon themselves to teach the Persians the contrary, and this lesson will never cease to be repeated in history. With money ships, cannon, horses may be bought; but not so military genius, administrative wisdom, discipline, enthusiasm. Put millions into the hands of your recruiters, and charge them to bring you a great leader and an army. You will find a hundred captains instead of one, and a thousand soldiers. But put them under fire: you will have enough of your hirelings! At least one might imagine that with money alone it is possible to lighten misery. Ah! that too is an illusion from which we must turn away. Money, be the sum great or small, is a seed which germinates into abuses. Unless there go with it intelligence, kindness, much knowledge of men, it will do nothing but harm, and we run great risk of corrupting both those who receive our bounty and those charged with its distribution.

* * * * *

Money will not answer for everything: it is a power, but it is not all-powerful. Nothing complicates life, demoralizes man, perverts the normal course of society like the development of venality. Wherever it reigns, everybody is duped by everybody else: one can no longer put trust in persons or things, no longer obtain anything of value. We would not be detractors of money, but this general law must be applied to it: Everything in its own place. When gold, which should be a servant, becomes a tyrannical power, affronting morality, dignity and liberty; when some exert themselves to obtain it at any price, offering for sale what is not merchandise, and others, possessing wealth, fancy that they can purchase what no one may buy, it is time to rise against this gross and criminal superstition, and cry aloud to the imposture: "Thy money perish with thee!" The most precious things that man possesses he has almost always received gratuitously: let him learn so to give them.



IX

NOTORIETY AND THE INGLORIOUS GOOD

One of the chief puerilities of our time is the love of advertisement. To emerge from obscurity, to be in the public eye, to make one's self talked of—some people are so consumed with this desire that we are justified in declaring them attacked with an itch for publicity. In their eyes obscurity is the height of ignominy: so they do their best to keep their names in every mouth. In their obscure position they look upon themselves as lost, like ship-wrecked sailors whom a night of tempest has cast on some lonely rock, and who have recourse to cries, volleys, fire, all the signals imaginable, to let it be known that they are there. Not content with setting off crackers and innocent rockets, many, to make themselves heard at any cost, have gone to the length of perfidy and even crime. The incendiary Erostratus has made numerous disciples. How many men of to-day have become notorious for having destroyed something of mark; pulled down—or tried to pull down—some man's high reputation; signalled their passage, in short, by a scandal, a meanness, or an atrocity!

This rage for notoriety does not surge through cracked brains alone, or only in the world of adventurers, charlatans and pretenders generally; it has spread abroad in all the domains of life, spiritual and material. Politics, literature, even science, and—most odious of all—philanthropy and religion are infected. Trumpets announce a good deed done, and souls must be saved with din and clamor. Pursuing its way of destruction, the rage for noise has entered places ordinarily silent, troubled spirits naturally serene, and vitiated in large measure all activity for good. The abuse of showing everything, or rather, putting everything on exhibition; the growing incapacity to appreciate that which chooses to remain hidden, and the habit of estimating the value of things by the racket they make, have come to corrupt the judgment of the most earnest men, and one sometimes wonders if society will not end by transforming itself into a great fair, with each one beating his drum in front of his tent.

Gladly do we quit the dust and din of like exhibitions, to go and breathe peacefully in some far-off nook of the woods, all surprise that the brook is so limpid, the forest so still, the solitude so enchanting. Thank God there are yet these uninvaded corners. However formidable the uproar, however deafening the babel of merry-andrews, it cannot carry beyond a certain limit; it grows faint and dies away. The realm of silence is vaster than the realm of noise. Herein is our consolation.

* * * * *

Rest a moment on the threshold of this infinite world of inglorious good, of quiet activities. Instantly we are under the charm we feel in stretches of untrodden snow, in hiding wood-flowers, in disappearing pathways that seem to lead to horizons without bourn. The world is so made that the engines of labor, the most active agencies, are everywhere concealed. Nature affects a sort of coquetry in masking her operations. It costs you pains to spy her out, ingenuity to surprise her, if you would see anything but results and penetrate the secrets of her laboratories. Likewise in human society, the forces which move for good remain invisible, and even in our individual lives; what is best in us is incommunicable, buried in the depths of us. And the more vital are these sensibilities and intuitions, confounding themselves with the very source of our being, the less ostentatious they are: they think themselves profaned by exposure to the light of day. There is a secret and inexpressible joy in possessing at the heart of one's being, an interior world known only to God, whence, nevertheless, come impulses, enthusiasms, the daily renewal of courage, and the most powerful motives for activity among our fellow men. When this intimate life loses in intensity, when man neglects it for what is superficial, he forfeits in worth all that he gains in appearance. By a sad fatality, it happens that in this way we often become less admirable in proportion as we are more admired. And we remain convinced that what is best in the world is unknown there; for only those know it who possess it, and if they speak of it, in so doing they destroy its charm.

There are passionate lovers of nature whom she fascinates most in by-places, in the cool of forests, in the clefts of canons, everywhere that the careless lover is not admitted to her contemplation. Forgetting time and the life of the world, they pass days in these inviolate stillnesses, watching a bird build its nest or brood over its young, or some little groundling at its gracious play. So to seek the good within himself—one must go where he no longer finds constraint, or pose, or "gallery" of any sort, but the simple fact of a life made up of wishing to be what it is good for it to be, without troubling about anything else.

May we be permitted to record here some observations made from life? As no names are given, they cannot be considered indiscreet.

In my country of Alsace, on the solitary route whose interminable ribbon stretches on and on under the forests of the Vosges, there is a stone-breaker whom I have seen at his work for thirty years. The first time I came upon him, I was a young student, setting out with swelling heart for the great city. The sight of this man did me good, for he was humming a song as he broke his stones. We exchanged a few words, and he said at the end: "Well, good-by, my boy, good courage and good luck!" Since then I have passed and repassed along that same route, under circumstances the most diverse, painful and joyful. The student has finished his course, the breaker of stones remains what he was. He has taken a few more precautions against the seasons' storms: a rush-mat protects his back, and his felt hat is drawn further down to shield his face. But the forest is always sending back the echo of his valiant hammer. How many sudden tempests have broken over his bent back, how much adverse fate has fallen on his head, on his house, on his country! He continues to break his stones, and, coming and going I find him by the roadside, smiling in spite of his age and his wrinkles, benevolent, speaking—above all in dark days—those simple words of brave men, which have so much effect when they are scanned to the breaking of stones.

It would be quite impossible to express the emotion the sight of this simple man gives me, and certainly he has no suspicion of it. I know of nothing more reassuring and at the same time more searching for the vanity which ferments in our hearts, than this coming face to face with an obscure worker who does his task as the oak grows and as the good God makes his sun to rise, without asking who is looking on.

I have known, too, a number of old teachers, men and women who have passed their whole life at the same occupation—making the rudiments of human knowledge and a few principles of conduct penetrate heads sometimes harder than the rocks. They have done it with their whole soul, throughout the length of a hard life in which the attention of men had little place. When they lie in their unknown graves, no one remembers them but a few humble people like themselves. But their recompense is in their love. No one is greater than these unknown.

How many hidden virtues may one not discover—if he know how to search—among people of a class he often ridicules without perceiving that in so doing he is guilty of cruelty, ingratitude and stupidity: I mean old maids. People amuse themselves with remarking the surprising dress and ways of some of them—things of no consequence, for that matter. They persist also in reminding us that others, very selfish, take interest in nothing but their own comfort and that of some cat or canary upon which their powers of affection center; and certainly these are not outdone in egoism by the most hardened celibates of the stronger sex. But what we oftenest forget is the amount of self-sacrifice hidden modestly away in so many of these truly admirable lives. Is it nothing to be without home and its love, without future, without personal ambition? to take upon one's self that cross of solitary life, so hard to bear, especially when there is added the solitude of the heart? to forget one's self and have no other interests than the care of the old, of orphans, the poor, the infirm—those whom the brutal mechanism of life casts out among its waste? Seen from without, these apparently tame and lusterless lives rouse pity rather than envy. Those who approach gently sometimes divine sad secrets, great trials undergone, heavy burdens beneath which too fragile shoulders bend; but this is only the side of shadow. We should learn to know and value this richness of heart, this pure goodness, this power to love, to console, to hope, this joyful giving up of self, this persistence in sweetness and forgiveness even toward the unworthy. Poor old maids! how many wrecked lives have you rescued, how many wounded have you healed, how many wanderers have you gently led aright, how many naked have you clothed, how many orphans have you taken in, and how many strangers, who would have been alone in the world but for you—you who yourselves are often remembered of no one. I mistake. Someone knows you; it is that great mysterious Pity which keeps watch over our lives and suffers in our misfortunes. Forgotten like you, often blasphemed, it has confided to you some of its heavenliest messages, and that perhaps is why above your gentle comings and goings, we sometimes seem to hear the rustling wings of ministering angels.

* * * * *

The good hides itself under so many different forms, that one has often as much pains to discover it as to unearth the best concealed crimes. A Russian doctor, who had passed ten years of his life in Siberia, condemned for political reasons to forced labor, used to find great pleasure in telling of the generosity, courage and humanity he had observed, not only among a large number of the condemned, but also among the convict guards. For the moment one is tempted to exclaim: Where will not the good hide away! And in truth life offers here great surprises and embarrassing contrasts. There are good men, officially so recognized, quoted among their associates, I had almost said guaranteed by the Government or the Church, who can be reproached with nothing but dry and hard hearts; while we are astonished to encounter in certain fallen human beings, the most genuine tenderness, and as it were a thirst for self-devotion.

* * * * *

I should like to speak next—apropos of the inglorious good—of a class that to-day it is thought quite fitting to treat with the utmost one-sidedness. I mean the rich. Some people think the last word is said when they have stigmatized that infamy, capital. For them, all who possess great fortunes are monsters gorged with the blood of the miserable. Others, not so declamatory, persist, however, in confounding riches with egoism and insensibility. Justice should be visited on these errors, be they involuntary or calculated. No doubt there are rich men who concern themselves with nobody else, and others who do good only with ostentation; indeed, we know it too well. But does their inhumanity or hypocrisy take away the value of the good that others do, and that they often hide with a modesty so perfect?

I knew a man to whom every misfortune had come which can strike us in our affections. He had lost a beloved wife, had seen all his children buried, one after another. But he had a great fortune, the result of his own labor. Living in the utmost simplicity, almost without personal wants, he spent his time in searching for opportunities to do good, and profiting by them. How many people he surprised in flagrant poverty, what means he combined for relieving distress and lighting up dark lives, with what kindly thoughtfulness he took his friends unawares, no one can imagine. He liked to do good to others and enjoy their surprise when they did not know whence the relief came. It pleased him to repair the injustices of fortune, to bring tears of happiness in families pursued by mischance. He was continually plotting, contriving, machinating in the dark, with a childish fear of being caught with his hand in the bag. The greater part of these fine deeds were not known till after his death; the whole of them we shall never know.

He was a socialist of the right sort! for there are two kinds of them. Those who aspire to appropriate to themselves a part of the goods of others, are numerous and commonplace. To belong to their order it suffices to have a big appetite. Those who are hungering to divide their own goods with men who have none, are rare and precious, for to enter this choice company there is need of a brave and noble heart, free from selfishness, and sensitive to both the happiness and unhappiness of its fellows. Fortunately the race of these socialists is not extinct, and I feel an unalloyed satisfaction in offering them a tribute they never claim.

I must be pardoned for dwelling upon this. It does one good to offset the bitterness of so many infamies, so many calumnies, so much charlatanism, by resting the eyes upon something more beautiful, breathing the perfume of these stray corners where simple goodness flowers.

A lady, a foreigner, doubtless little used to Parisian life, just now told me with what horror the things she sees here inspire her:—these vile posters, these "yellow" journals, these women with bleached hair, this crowd rushing to the races, to dance-halls, to roulette tables, to corruption—the whole flood of superficial and mundane life. She did not speak the word Babylon, but doubtless it was out of pity for one of the inhabitants of this city of perdition.

"Alas, yes, madam, these things are sad, but you have not seen all."

"Heaven preserve me from that!"

"On the contrary, I wish you could see everything; for if the dark side is very ugly, there is so much to atone for it. And believe me, madam, you have simply to change your quarter, or observe at another hour. For instance, take the Paris of early morning. It will offer much to correct your impressions of the Paris of the night. Go see, among so many other working people, the street-sweepers, who come out at the hour when the revellers and malefactors go in. Observe beneath these rags those caryatid bodies, those austere faces! How serious they are at their work of sweeping away the refuse of the night's revelry. One might liken them to the prophets at Ahasuerus's gates. There are women among them, many old people. When the air is cold they stop to blow their fingers, and then go at it again. So it is every day. And they, too, are inhabitants of Paris.

"Go next to the faubourgs, to the factories, especially the smaller ones, where the children or the employers labor with the men. Watch the army of workers marching to their tasks. How ready and willing these young girls seem, as they come gaily down from their distant quarters to the shops and stores and offices of the city. Then visit the homes from which they come. See the woman of the people at her work. Her husband's wages are modest, their dwelling is cramped, the children are many, the father is often harsh. Make a collection of the biographies of lowly people, budgets of modest family life: look at them attentively and long.

"After that, go see the students. Those who have scandalized you in the streets are numerous, but those who labor hard are legion—only they stay at home, and are not talked about. If you knew the toil and dig of the Latin Quarter! You find the papers full of the rumpus made by a certain set of youths who call themselves students. The papers say enough of those who break windows; but why do they make no mention of those who spend their nights toiling over problems? Because it wouldn't interest the public. Yes, when now and then one of them, a medical student perhaps, dies a victim to professional duty, the matter has two lines in the dailies. A drunken brawl gets half a column, with every detail elaborated. Nothing is lacking but the portraits of the heroes—and not always that!

"I should never end were I to try to point out to you all that you must go to see if you would see all: you would needs make the tour of society at large, rich and poor, wise and ignorant. And certainly you would not judge so severely then. Paris is a world, and here, as in the world in general, the good hides away while the evil flaunts itself. Observing only the surface, you sometimes ask how there can possibly be so much riff-raff. When, on the contrary, you look into the depths, you are astonished that in this troublous, obscure and sometimes frightful life there can be so much of virtue."

* * * * *

But why linger over these things? Am I not blowing trumpets for those who hold trumpet-blowing in horror? Do not understand me so. My aim is this—to make men think about unostentatious goodness; above all, to make them love it and practice it. The man who finds his satisfaction in things which glitter and hold his eyes, is lost: first, because he will thus see evil before all else; then, because he gets accustomed to the sight of only such good as seeks for notice, and therefore easily succumbs to the temptation to live himself for appearances. Not only must one be resigned to obscurity, he must love it, if he does not wish to slip insensibly into the ranks of figurants, who preserve their parts only while under the eyes of the spectators, and put off in the wings the restraints imposed on the stage. Here we are in the presence of one of the essential elements of the moral life. And this which we say is true not only for those who are called humble and whose lot it is to pass unremarked; it is just as true, and more so, for the chief actors. If you would not be a brilliant inutility, a man of gold lace and plumes, but empty inside, you must play the star role in the simple spirit of the most obscure of your collaborators. He who is nothing worth except on hours of parade, is worth less than nothing. Have we the perilous honor of being always in view, of marching in the front ranks? Let us take so much the greater care of the sanctuary of silent good within us. Let us give to the structure whose facade is seen of our fellow-men, a wide foundation of simplicity, of humble fidelity. And then, out of sympathy, out of gratitude, let us stay near our brothers who are unknown to fame. We owe everything to them—do we not? I call to witness everyone who has found in life this encouraging experience, that stones hidden in the soil hold up the whole edifice. All those who arrive at having a public and recognized value, owe it to some humble spiritual ancestors, to some forgotten inspirers. A small number of the good, among them simple women, peasants, vanquished heroes, parents as modest as they are revered, personify for us beautiful and noble living; their example inspires us and gives us strength. The remembrance of them is forever inseparable from that conscience before which we arraign ourselves. In our hours of trial, we think of them, courageous and serene, and our burdens lighten. In clouds they compass us about, these witnesses invisible and beloved who keep us from stumbling and our feet from falling in the battle; and day by day do they prove to us that the treasure of humanity is its hidden goodness.



X

THE WORLD AND THE LIFE OF THE HOME

In the time of the Second Empire, in one of our pleasantest sub-prefectures of the provinces, a little way from some baths frequented by the Emperor, there was a mayor, a very worthy man and intelligent too, whose head was suddenly turned by the thought that his sovereign might one day descend upon his home. Up to this time he had lived in the house of his fathers, a son respectful of the slightest family traditions. But when once the all-absorbing idea of receiving the Emperor had taken possession of his brain, he became another man. In this new light, what had before seemed sufficient for his needs, even enjoyable, all this simplicity that his ancestors had loved, appeared poor, ugly, ridiculous. Out of the question to ask an Emperor to climb this wooden staircase, sit in these old arm-chairs, walk over such superannuated carpets. So the mayor called architect and masons; pickaxes attacked walls and demolished partitions, and a drawing-room was made, out of all proportion to the rest of the house in size and splendor. He and his family retired into close quarters, where people and furniture incommoded each other generally. Then, having emptied his purse and upset his household by this stroke of genius, he awaited the royal guest. Alas, he soon saw the end of the Empire arrive, but the Emperor never.

The folly of this poor man is not so rare. As mad as he are all those who sacrifice their home life to the demands of the world. And the danger in such a sacrifice is most menacing in times of unrest. Our contemporaries are constantly exposed to it, and constantly succumbing. How many family treasures have they literally thrown away to satisfy worldly ambitions and conventions; but the happiness upon which they thought to come through these impious immolations always eludes them.

To give up the ancestral hearth, to let the family traditions fall into desuetude, to abandon the simple domestic customs, for whatever return, is to make a fool's bargain; and such is the place in society of family life, that if this be impoverished, the trouble is felt throughout the whole social organism. To enjoy a normal development, this organism has need of well-tried individuals, each having his own value, his own hall-mark. Otherwise society becomes a flock, and sometimes a flock without a shepherd. But whence does the individual draw his originality—this unique something, which, joined to the distinctive qualities of others, constitutes the wealth and strength of a community? He can draw it only from his own family. Destroy the assemblage of memories and practices whence emanates for each home an atmosphere in miniature, and you dry up the sources of character, sap the strength of public spirit.

It concerns the country that each home be a world, profound, respected, communicating to its members an ineffaceable moral imprint. But before pursuing the subject further, let us rid ourselves of a misunderstanding. Family feeling, like all beautiful things, has its caricature, which is family egoism. Some families are like barred and bolted citadels, their members organized for the exploitation of the whole world. Everything that does not directly concern them is indifferent to them. They live like colonists, I had almost said intruders, in the society around them. Their particularism is pushed to such an excess that they make enemies of the whole human race. In their small way they resemble those powerful societies, formed from time to time through the ages, which possess themselves of universal rule, and for which no one outside their own community counts. This is the spirit that has sometimes made the family seem a retreat of egoism which it was necessary to destroy for the public safety. But as patriotism and jingoism are as far apart as the east from the west, so are family feeling and clannishness.

* * * * *

Here we are talking of right family feeling, and nothing else in the world can take its place; for in it lie in germ all those fine and simple virtues which assure the strength and duration of social institutions. And the very base of family feeling is respect for the past; for the best possessions of a family are its common memories. An intangible, indivisible and inalienable capital, these souvenirs constitute a sacred fund that each member of a family ought to consider more precious than anything else he possesses. They exist in a dual form: in idea and in fact. They show themselves in language, habits of thought, sentiments, even instincts, and one sees them materialized in portraits, furniture, buildings, dress, songs. To profane eyes, they are nothing; to the eyes of those who know how to appreciate the things of the family, they are relics with which one should not part at any price.

But what generally happens in our day? Worldliness wars upon the sentiment of family, and I know of no strife more impassioned. By great means and small, by all sorts of new customs, requirements and pretensions, the spirit of the world breaks into the domestic sanctuary. What are this stranger's rights? its titles? Upon what does it rest its peremptory claims? This is what people too often neglect to inquire. They make a mistake. We treat the invader as very poor and simple people do a pompous visitor. For this incommoding guest of a day, they pillage their garden, bully their children and servants, and neglect their work. Such conduct is not only wrong, it is impolitic. One should have the courage to remain what he is, in the face of all comers.

The worldly spirit is full of impertinences. Here is a home which has formed characters of mark, and is forming them yet. The people, the furnishings, the customs are all in harmony. By marriage or through relations of business or pleasure, the worldly spirit enters. It finds everything out of date, awkward, too simple, lacking the modern touch. At first it restricts itself to criticism and light raillery. But this is the dangerous moment. Look out for yourself; here is the enemy! If you so much as listen to his reasonings, to-morrow you will sacrifice a piece of furniture, the next day a good old tradition, and so one by one the family heirlooms dear to the heart will go to the bric-a-brac dealer—and filial piety with them.

In the midst of your new habits and in the changed atmosphere, your friends of other days, your old relatives, will be expatriated. Your next step will be to lay them aside in their turn; the worldly spirit leaves the old out of consideration. At last, established in an absolutely transformed setting, even you will view yourself with amazement. Nothing will be familiar, but surely it will be correct; at least the world will be satisfied!—Ah! that is where you are mistaken! After having made you cast out pure treasure as so much junk, it will find that your borrowed livery fits you ill, and will hasten to make you sensible of the ridiculousness of the situation. Much better have had from the beginning the courage of your convictions, and have defended your home.

Many young people when they marry, listen to this voice of the world. Their parents have given them the example of a modest life; but the new generation thinks it affirms its rights to existence and liberty, by repudiating ways in its eyes too patriarchal. So these young folks make efforts to set themselves up lavishly in the latest fashion, and rid themselves of useless property at dirt-cheap prices. Instead of filling their houses with objects which say: Remember! they garnish them with quite new furnishings that as yet have no meaning. Wait, I am wrong; these things are often symbols, as it were, of a facile and superficial existence. In their midst one breathes a certain heady vapor of mundanity. They recall the life outside, the turmoil, the rush. And were one sometimes disposed to forget this life, they would call back his wandering thought and say: Remember!—in another sense: Do not forget your appointment at the club, the play, the races! The home, then, becomes a sort of half-way house where one comes to rest a little between two prolonged absences; it isn't a good place to stay. As it has no soul, it does not speak to yours. Time to eat and sleep, and then off again! Otherwise you become as dull as a hermit.

We are all acquainted with people who have a rage for being abroad, who think the world would no longer go round if they didn't figure on all sides of it. To stay at home is penal; there they cease to be in view. A horror of home life possesses them to such a degree that they would rather pay to be bored outside than be amused gratuitously within.

In this way society slowly gravitates toward life in herds, which must not be confounded with public life. The life in herds is somewhat like that of swarms of flies in the sun. Nothing so much resembles the worldly life of a man as the worldly life of another man. And this universal banality destroys the very essence of public spirit. One need not journey far to discover the ravages made in modern society by the spirit of worldliness; and if we have so little foundation, so little equilibrium, calm good sense and initiative, one of the chief reasons lies in the undermining of the home life. The masses have timed their pace by that of people of fashion. They too have become worldly. Nothing can be more so than to quit one's own hearth for the life of saloons. The squalor and misery of the homes is not enough to explain the current which carries each man away from his own. Why does the peasant desert for the inn the house that his father and grandfather found so comfortable? It has remained the same. There is the same fire in the same chimney. Whence comes it that it lights only an incomplete circle, when in olden times young and old sat shoulder to shoulder? Something has changed in the minds of men. Yielding to dangerous impulses, they have broken with simplicity. The fathers have quitted their post of honor, the wives grow dull beside the solitary hearth, and the children quarrel while waiting their turn to go abroad, each after his own fancy.

We must learn again to live the home life, to value our domestic traditions. A pious care has preserved certain monuments of the past. So antique dress, provincial dialects, old folk songs have found appreciative hands to gather them up before they should disappear from the earth. What a good deed, to guard these crumbs of a great past, these vestiges of the souls of our ancestors! Let us do the same for our family traditions, save and guard as much as possible of the patriarchal, whatever its form.

* * * * *

But not everyone has traditions to keep. All the more reason for redoubling the effort to constitute and foster a family life. And to do this there is need neither of numbers nor a rich establishment. To create a home you must have the spirit of home. Just as the smallest village may have its history, its moral stamp, so the smallest home may have its soul. Oh! the spirit of places, the atmosphere which surrounds us in human dwellings! What a world of mystery! Here, even on the threshold the cold begins to penetrate, you are ill at ease, something intangible repulses you. There, no sooner does the door shut you in than friendliness and good humor envelop you. It is said that walls have ears. They have also voices, a mute eloquence. Everything that a dwelling contains is bathed in an ether of personality. And I find proof of its quality even in the apartments of bachelors and solitary women. What an abyss between one room and another room! Here, all is dead, indifferent, commonplace: the device of the owner is written all over it, even in his fashion of arranging his photographs and books: All is the same to me! There, one breathes in animation, a contagious joy in life. The visitor hears repeated in countless fashions: "Whoever you are, guest of an hour, I wish you well, peace be with you!"

Words can do little justice to the subject of home, tell little about the effect of a favorite flower in the window, or the charm of an old arm-chair where the grandfather used to sit, offering his wrinkled hands to the kisses of chubby children. Poor moderns, always moving or remodeling! We who from transforming our cities, our houses, our customs and creeds, have no longer where to lay our heads, let us not add to the pathos and emptiness of our changeful existence by abandoning the life of the home. Let us light again the flame put out on our hearths, make sanctuaries for ourselves, warm nests where the children may grow into men, where love may find privacy, old age repose, prayer an altar, and the fatherland a cult!



XI

SIMPLE BEAUTY

Someone may protest against the nature of the simple life in the name of esthetics, or oppose to ours the theory of the service of luxury—that providence of business, fostering mother of arts, and grace of civilized society. We shall try, briefly, to anticipate these objections.

It will no doubt have been evident that the spirit which animates these pages is not utilitarian. It would be an error to suppose that the simplicity we seek has anything in common with that which misers impose upon themselves through cupidity, or narrow-minded people through false austerity. To the former the simple life is the one that costs least; to the latter it is a flat and colorless existence, whose merit lies in depriving one's self of everything bright, smiling, seductive.

It displeases us not a whit that people of large means should put their fortune into circulation instead of hoarding it, so giving life to commerce and the fine arts. That is using one's privileges to good advantage. What we would combat is foolish prodigality, the selfish use of wealth, and above all the quest of the superfluous on the part of those who have the greatest need of taking thought for the necessary. The lavishness of a Maecenas could not have the same effect in a society as that of a common spendthrift who astonishes his contemporaries by the magnificence of his life and the folly of his waste. In these two cases the same term means very different things—to scatter money broadcast does not say it all; there are ways of doing it which ennoble men, and others which degrade them. Besides, to scatter money supposes that one is well provided with it. When the love of sumptuous living takes possession of those whose means are limited, the matter becomes strangely altered. And a very striking characteristic of our time is the rage for scattering broadcast which the very people have who ought to husband their resources. Munificence is a benefit to society, that we grant willingly. Let us even allow that the prodigality of certain rich men is a safety-valve for the escape of the superabundant: we shall not attempt to gainsay it. Our contention is that too many people meddle with the safety-valve when to practice economy is the part of both their interest and their duty: their extravagance is a private misfortune and a public danger.

* * * * *

So much for the utility of luxury.

We now wish to explain ourselves upon the question of esthetics—oh! very modestly, and without trespassing on the ground of the specialists. Through a too common illusion, simplicity and beauty are considered as rivals. But simple is not synonymous with ugly, any more than sumptuous, stylish and costly are synonymous with beautiful. Our eyes are wounded by the crying spectacle of gaudy ornament, venal art and senseless and graceless luxury. Wealth coupled with bad taste sometimes makes us regret that so much money is in circulation to provoke the creation of such a prodigality of horrors. Our contemporary art suffers as much from the want of simplicity as does our literature—too much in it that is irrelevant, over-wrought, falsely imagined. Rarely is it given us to contemplate in line, form, or color, that simplicity allied to perfection which commands the eyes as evidence does the mind. We need to be rebaptized in the ideal purity of immortal beauty which puts its seal on the masterpieces; one shaft of its radiance is worth more than all our pompous exhibitions.

* * * * *

Yet what we now have most at heart is to speak of the ordinary esthetics of life, of the care one should bestow upon the adornment of his dwelling and his person, giving to existence that luster without which it lacks charm. For it is not a matter of indifference whether man pays attention to these superfluous necessities or whether he does not: it is by them that we know whether he puts soul into his work. Far from considering it as wasteful to give time and thought to the perfecting, beautifying and poetizing of forms, I think we should spend as much as we can upon it. Nature gives us her example, and the man who should affect contempt for the ephemeral splendor of beauty with which we garnish our brief days, would lose sight of the intentions of Him who has put the same care and love into the painting of the lily of an hour and the eternal hills.

But we must not fall into the gross error of confounding true beauty with that which has only the name. The beauty and poetry of existence lie in the understanding we have of it. Our home, our table, our dress should be the interpreters of intentions. That these intentions be so expressed, it is first necessary to have them, and he who possesses them makes them evident through the simplest means. One need not be rich to give grace and charm to his habit and his habitation: it suffices to have good taste and good-will. We come here to a point very important to everybody, but perhaps of more interest to women than to men.

Those who would have women conceal themselves in coarse garments of the shapeless uniformity of bags, violate nature in her very heart, and misunderstand completely the spirit of things. If dress were only a precaution to shelter us from cold or rain, a piece of sacking or the skin of a beast would answer. But it is vastly more than this. Man puts himself entire into all that he does; he transforms into types the things that serve him. The dress is not simply a covering, it is a symbol. I call to witness the rich flowering of national and provincial costumes, and those worn by our early corporations. A woman's toilette, too, has something to say to us. The more meaning there is in it, the greater its worth. To be truly beautiful, it must tell us of beautiful things, things personal and veritable. Spend all the money you possess upon it, if its form is determined by chance or custom, if it has no relation to her who wears it, it is only toggery, a domino. Ultra-fashionable dress, which completely masks feminine personality under designs of pure convention, despoils it of its principal attraction. From this abuse it comes about that many things which women admire do as much wrong to their beauty as to the purses of their husbands and fathers. What would you say of a young girl who expressed her thoughts in terms very choice, indeed, but taken word for word from a phrase-book? What charm could you find in this borrowed language? The effect of toilettes well-designed in themselves but seen again and again on all women indiscriminately, is precisely the same.

I can not resist citing here a passage from Camille Lemonnier, that harmonizes with my idea.

"Nature has given to the fingers of woman a charming art, which she knows by instinct, and which is peculiarly her own—as silk to the worm, and lace-work to the swift and subtle spider. She is the poet, the interpreter of her own grace and ingenuousness, the spinner of the mystery in which her wish to please arrays itself. All the talent she expends in her effort to equal man in the other arts, is never worth the spirit and conception wrought out through a bit of stuff in her skillful hands.

"Well, I wish that this art were more honored than it is. As education should consist in thinking with one's mind, feeling with one's heart, expressing the little personalities of the inmost, invisible I,—which on the contrary are repressed, leveled down by conformity,—I would that the young girl in her novitiate of womanhood, the future mother, might early become the little exponent of this art of the toilet, her own dressmaker in short—she who one day shall make the dresses of her children. But with the taste and the gift to improvise, to express herself in that masterpiece of feminine personality and skill—a gown, without which a woman is no more than a bundle of rags."

The dress you have made for yourself is almost always the most becoming, and, however that may be, it is the one that pleases you most. Women of leisure too often forget this; working women, also, in city and country alike. Since these last are costumed by dressmakers and milliners, in very doubtful imitation of the modish world, grace has almost disappeared from their dress. And has anything more surely the gift to please than the fresh apparition of a young working girl or a daughter of the fields, wearing the costume of her country, and beautiful from her simplicity alone?

These same reflections might be applied to the fashion of decorating and arranging our houses. If there are toilettes which reveal an entire conception of life, hats that are poems, knots of ribbon that are veritable works of art, so there are interiors which after their manner speak to the mind. Why, under pretext of decorating our homes, do we destroy that personal character which always has such value? Why have our sleeping-rooms conform to those of hotels, our reception-rooms to waiting-rooms, by making predominant a uniform type of official beauty?

What a pity to go through the houses of a city, the cities of a country, the countries of a vast continent, and encounter everywhere certain forms, identical, inevitable, exasperating by their repetition! How esthetics would gain by more simplicity! Instead of this luxury in job lots, all these decorations, pretentious but vapid from iteration, we should have an infinite variety; happy improvisations would strike our eyes, the unexpected in a thousand forms would rejoice our hearts, and we should rediscover the secret of impressing on a drapery or a piece of furniture that stamp of human personality which makes certain antiques priceless.

Let us pass at last to things simpler still; I mean the little details of housekeeping which many young people of our day find so unpoetical. Their contempt for material things, for the humble cares a house demands, arises from a confusion very common but none the less unfortunate, which comes from the belief that beauty and poetry are within some things, while others lack them; that some occupations are distinguished and agreeable, such as cultivating letters, playing the harp; and that others are menial and disagreeable, like blacking shoes, sweeping, and watching the pot boil. Childish error! Neither harp nor broom has anything to do with it; all depends on the hand in which they rest and the spirit that moves it. Poetry is not in things, it is in us. It must be impressed on objects from without, as the sculptor impresses his dream on the marble. If our life and our occupations remain too often without charm, in spite of any outward distinction they may have, it is because we have not known how to put anything into them. The height of art is to make the inert live, and to tame the savage. I would have our young girls apply themselves to the development of the truly feminine art of giving a soul to things which have none. The triumph of woman's charm is in that work. Only a woman knows how to put into a home that indefinable something whose virtue has made the poet say, "The housetop rejoices and is glad." They say there are no such things as fairies, or that there are fairies no longer, but they know not what they say. The original of the fairies sung by poets was found, and is still, among those amiable mortals who knead bread with energy, mend rents with cheerfulness, nurse the sick with smiles, put witchery into a ribbon and genius into a stew.

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It is indisputable that the culture of the fine arts has something refining about it, and that our thoughts and acts are in the end impregnated with that which strikes our eyes. But the exercise of the arts and the contemplation of their products is a restricted privilege. It is not given to everyone to possess, to comprehend or to create fine things. Yet there is a kind of ministering beauty which may make its way everywhere—the beauty which springs from the hands of our wives and daughters. Without it, what is the most richly decorated house? A dead dwelling-place. With it the barest home has life and brightness. Among the forces capable of transforming the will and increasing happiness, there is perhaps none in more universal use than this beauty. It knows how to shape itself by means of the crudest tools, in the midst of the greatest difficulties. When the dwelling is cramped, the purse limited, the table modest, a woman who has the gift, finds a way to make order, fitness and convenience reign in her house. She puts care and art into everything she undertakes. To do well what one has to do is not in her eyes the privilege of the rich, but the right of all. That is her aim, and she knows how to give her home a dignity and an attractiveness that the dwellings of princes, if everything is left to mercenaries, cannot possess.

Thus understood, life quickly shows itself rich in hidden beauties, in attractions and satisfactions close at hand. To be one's self, to realize in one's natural place the kind of beauty which is fitting there—this is the ideal. How the mission of woman broadens and deepens in significance when it is summed up in this: to put a soul into the inanimate, and to give to this gracious spirit of things those subtle and winsome outward manifestations to which the most brutish of human beings is sensible. Is not this better than to covet what one has not, and to give one's self up to longings for a poor imitation of others' finery?



XII

PRIDE AND SIMPLICITY IN THE INTERCOURSE OF MEN

It would perhaps be difficult to find a more convincing example than pride to show that the obstacles to a better, stronger, serener life are rather in us than in circumstances. The diversity, and more than that, the contrasts in social conditions give rise inevitably to all sorts of conflicts. Yet in spite of this how greatly would social relations be simplified, if we put another spirit into mapping out our plan of outward necessities! Be well persuaded that it is not primarily differences of class and occupation, differences in the outward manifestations of their destinies, which embroil men. If such were the case, we should find an idyllic peace reigning among colleagues, and all those whose interests and lot are virtually equivalent. On the contrary, as everyone knows, the most violent shocks come when equal meets equal, and there is no war worse than civil war. But that which above all things else hinders men from good understanding, is pride. It makes a man a hedgehog, wounding everyone he touches. Let us speak first of the pride of the great.

What offends me in this rich man passing in his carriage, is not his equipage, his dress, or the number and splendor of his retinue: it is his contempt. That he possesses a great fortune does not disturb me, unless I am badly disposed: but that he splashes me with mud, drives over my body, shows by his whole attitude that I count for nothing in his eyes because I am not rich like himself—this is what disturbs me, and righteously. He heaps suffering upon me needlessly. He humiliates and insults me gratuitously. It is not what is vulgar within me, but what is noblest that asserts itself in the face of this offensive pride. Do not accuse me of envy; I feel none; it is my manhood that is wounded. We need not search far to illustrate these ideas. Every man of any acquaintance with life has had numerous experiences which will justify our dictum in his eyes. In certain communities devoted to material interests, the pride of wealth dominates to such a degree that men are quoted like values in the stock market. The esteem in which a man is held is proportionate to the contents of his strong box. Here "Society" is made up of big fortunes, the middle class of medium fortunes. Then come people who have little, then those who have nothing. All intercourse is regulated by this principle. And the relatively rich man who has shown his disdain for those less opulent, is crushed in turn by the contempt of his superiors in fortune. So the madness of comparison rages from the summit to the base. Such an atmosphere is ready to perfection for the nurture of the worst feeling; yet it is not wealth, but the spirit of the wealthy that must be arraigned.

Many rich men are free from this gross conception—especially is this true of those who from father to son are accustomed to ease—yet they sometimes forget that there is a certain delicacy in not making contrasts too marked. Suppose there is no wrong in enjoying a large superfluity: is it indispensable to display it, to wound the eyes of those who lack necessities, to flaunt one's magnificence at the doors of poverty? Good taste and a sort of modesty always hinder a well man from talking of his fine appetite, his sound sleep, his exuberance of spirits, in the presence of one dying of consumption. Many of the rich do not exercise this tact, and so are greatly wanting in pity and discretion. Are they not unreasonable to complain of envy, after having done everything to provoke it?

But the greatest lack is that want of discernment which leads men to ground their pride in their fortune. To begin with, it is a childish confusion of thought to consider wealth as a personal quality; it would be hard to find a more ingenuous fashion of deceiving one's self as to the relative value of the container and the thing contained. I have no wish to dwell on this question: it is too painful. And yet one cannot resist saying to those concerned: "Take care, do not confound what you possess with what you are. Go learn to know the under side of worldly splendor, that you may feel its moral misery and its puerility." The traps pride sets for us are too ridiculous. We should distrust association with a thing that make us hateful to our neighbors and robs us of clearness of vision.

He who yields to the pride of riches, forgets this other point, the most important of all—that possession is a public trust. Without doubt, individual wealth is as legitimate as individual existence and liberty. These things are inseparable, and it is a dream pregnant with dangers that offers battle to such fundamentals of life. But the individual touches society at every point, and all he does should be done with the whole in view. Possession, then, is less a privilege of which to be proud than a charge whose gravity should be felt. As there is an apprenticeship, often very difficult to serve, for the exercise of every social office, so this profession we call wealth demands an apprenticeship. To know how to be rich is an art, and one of the least easy of arts to master. Most people, rich and poor alike, imagine that in opulence one has nothing to do but to take life easy. That is why so few men know how to be rich. In the hands of too many, wealth, according to the genial and redoubtable comparison of Luther, is like a harp in the hoofs of an ass. They have no idea of the manner of its use.

So when we encounter a man at once rich and simple, that is to say, who considers his wealth as a means of fulfilling his mission in the world, we should offer him our homage, for he is surely mark-worthy. He has surmounted obstacles, borne trials, and triumphed in temptations both gross and subtle. He does not fail to discriminate between the contents of his pocketbook and the contents of his head or heart, and he does not estimate his fellow-men in figures. His exceptional position, instead of exalting him, makes him humble, for he is very sensible of how far he falls short of reaching the level of his duty. He has remained a man—that says it all. He is accessible, helpful, and far from making of his wealth a barrier to separate him from other men, he makes it a means for coming nearer and nearer to them. Although the profession of riches has been so dishonored by the selfish and the proud, such a man as this always makes his worth felt by everyone not devoid of a sense of justice. Each of us who comes in contact with him and sees him live, is forced to look within and ask himself the question, "What would become of me in such a situation? Should I keep this modesty, this naturalness, this uprightness which uses its own as though it belonged to others?" So long as there is a human society in the world, so long as there are bitterly conflicting interests, so long as envy and egoism exist on the earth, nothing will be worthier of honor than wealth permeated by the spirit of simplicity. And it will do more than make itself forgiven; it will make itself beloved.

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More dangerous than pride inspired by wealth is that inspired by power, and I mean by the word every prerogative that one man has over another, be it unlimited or restricted. I see no means of preventing the existence in the world of men of unequal authority. Every organism supposes a hierarchy of powers—we shall never escape from that law. But I fear that if the love of power is so wide-spread, the spirit of power is almost impossible to find. From wrong understanding and misuse of it, those who keep even a fraction of authority almost everywhere succeed in compromising it.

Power exercises a great influence over him who holds it. A head must be very well balanced not to be disturbed by it. The sort of dementia which took possession of the Roman emperors in the time of their world-wide rule, is a universal malady whose symptoms belong to all times. In every man there sleeps a tyrant, awaiting only a favorable occasion for waking. Now the tyrant is the worst enemy of authority, because he furnishes us its intolerable caricature, whence come a multitude of social complications, collisions and hatreds. Every man who says to those dependent on him: "Do this because it is my will and pleasure," does ill. There is within each one of us something that invites us to resist personal power, and this something is very respectable. For at bottom we are equal, and there is no one who has the right to exact obedience from me because he is he and I am I: if he does so, his command degrades me, and I have no right to suffer myself to be degraded.

One must have lived in schools, in work-shops, in the army, in Government offices, he must have closely followed the relations between masters and servants, have observed a little everywhere where the supremacy of man exercises itself over man, to form any idea of the injury done by those who use power arrogantly. Of every free soul they make a slave soul, which is to say the soul of a rebel. And it appears that this result, with its social disaster, is most certain when he who commands is least removed from the station of him who obeys. The most implacable tyrant is the tyrant himself under authority. Foremen and overseers put more violence into their dealings than superintendents and employers. The corporal is generally harsher than the colonel. In certain families where madam has not much more education than her maid, the relations between them are those of the convict and his warder. And woe everywhere to him who falls into the hands of a subaltern drunk with his authority!

We forget that the first duty of him who exercises power is humility. Haughtiness is not authority. It is not we who are the law; the law is over our heads. We only interpret it, but to make it valid in the eyes of others, we must first be subject to it ourselves. To command and to obey in the society of men, are after all but two forms of the same virtue—voluntary servitude. If you are not obeyed, it is generally because you have not yourself obeyed first.

The secret of moral ascendancy rests with those who rule with simplicity. They soften by the spirit the harshness of the fact. Their authority is not in shoulder-straps, titles or disciplinary measures. They make use of neither ferule nor threats, yet they achieve everything. Why? Because we feel that they are themselves ready for everything. That which confers upon a man the right to demand of another the sacrifice of his time, his money, his passions, even his life, is not only that he is resolved upon all these sacrifices himself, but that he has made them in advance. In the command of a man animated by this spirit of renunciation, there is a mysterious force which communicates itself to him who is to obey, and helps him do his duty.

In all the provinces of human activity there are chiefs who inspire, strengthen, magnetize their soldiers: under their direction the troops do prodigies. With them one feels himself capable of any effort, ready to go through fire, as the saying has it; and if he goes, it is with enthusiasm.

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But the pride of the exalted is not the only pride; there is also the pride of the humble—this arrogance of underlings, fit pendant to that of the great. The root of these two prides is the same. It is not alone that lofty and imperious being, the man who says, "I am the law," that provokes insurrection by his very attitude; it is also that pig-headed subaltern who will not admit that there is anything beyond his knowledge.

There are really many people who find all superiority irritating. For them, every piece of advice is an offense, every criticism an imposition, every order an outrage on their liberty. They would not know how to submit to rule. To respect anything or anybody would seem to them a mental aberration. They say to people after their fashion: "Beyond us there is nothing."

To the family of the proud belong also those difficult and supersensitive people who in humble life find that their superiors never do them fitting honor, whom the best and most kindly do not succeed in satisfying, and who go about their duties with the air of a martyr. At bottom these disaffected minds have too much misplaced self-respect. They do not know how to fill their place simply, but complicate their life and that of others by unreasonable demands and morbid suspicions.

When one takes the trouble to study men at short range, he is surprised to find that pride has so many lurking-places among those who are by common consent called the humble. So powerful is this vice, that it arrives at forming round those who live in the most modest circumstances a wall which isolates them from their neighbors. There they are, intrenched, barricaded with their ambitions and their contempts, as inaccessible as the powerful of earth behind their aristocratic prejudices. Obscure or illustrious, pride wraps itself in its dark royalty of enmity to the human race. It is the same in misery and in high places—solitary and impotent, on guard against everybody, embroiling everything. And the last word about it is always this: If there is so much hostility and hatred between different classes of men, it is due less to exterior conditions than to an interior fatality. Conflicting interests and differences of situation dig ditches between us, it is true, but pride transforms the ditches into gulfs, and in reality it is pride alone which cries from brink to brink: "There is nothing in common between you and us."

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We have not finished with pride, but it is impossible to picture it under all its forms. I feel most resentful against it when it meddles with knowledge and appropriates that. We owe our knowledge to our fellows, as we do our riches and power. It is a social force which ought to be of service to everybody, and it can only be so when those who know remain sympathetically near to those who know not. When knowledge is turned into a tool for ambition, it destroys itself.

And what shall we say of the pride of good men? for it exists, and makes even virtue hateful. The just who repent them of the evil others do, remain in brotherhood and social rectitude. But the just who despise others for their faults and misdeeds, cut themselves off from humanity, and their goodness, descended to the rank of an ornament for their vanity, becomes like those riches which kindness does not inform, like authority untempered by the spirit of obedience. Like proud wealth and arrogant power, supercilious virtue also is detestable. It fosters in man traits and an attitude provocative of I know not what. The sight of it repels instead of attracting, and those whom it deigns to distinguish with its benefits feel as though they had been slapped in the face.

To resume and conclude, it is an error to think that our advantages, whatever they are, should be put to the service of our vanity. Each of them constitutes for him who enjoys it an obligation and not a reason for vainglory. Material wealth, power, knowledge, gifts of the heart and mind, become so much cause for discord when they serve to nourish pride. They remain beneficent only so long as they are the source of modesty in those who possess them.

Let us be humble if we have great possessions, for that proves that we are great debtors: all that a man has he owes to someone, and are we sure of being able to pay our debts?

Let us be humble if we sit in high places and hold the fate of others in our hands; for no clear-sighted man can fail to be sensible of unfitness for so grave a role.

Let us be humble if we have much knowledge, for it only serves to better show the vastness of the unknown, and to compare the little we have discovered for ourselves with the amplitude of that which we owe to the pains of others.

And, above all, let us be humble if we are virtuous, since no one should be more sensible of his defects than he whose conscience is illumined, and since he more than anyone else should feel the need of charity toward evil-doers, even of suffering in their stead.

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"And what about the necessary distinctions in life?" someone may ask. "As a result of your simplifications, are you not going to destroy that sense of the difference between men which must be maintained if society exists at all?"

I have no mind to suppress distinctions and differences. But I think that what distinguishes a man is not found in his social rank, his occupation, his dress or his fortune, but solely in himself. More than any other our own age has pricked the vain bubble of purely outward greatness. To be somebody at present, it does not suffice to wear the mantle of an emperor or a royal crown: what honor is there in wielding power through gold lace, a coat of arms or a ribbon? Not that visible signs are to be despised; they have their meaning and use, but on condition that they cover something and not a vacuum. The moment they cease to stand for realities, they become useless and dangerous. The only true distinction is superior worth. If you would have social rank duly respected, you must begin by being worthy of the rank that is your own; otherwise you help to bring it into hatred and contempt. It is unhappily too true that respect is diminishing among us, and it certainly is not from a lack of lines drawn round those who wish to be respected. The root of the evil is in the mistaken idea that high station exempts him who holds it from observing the common obligations of life. As we rise, we believe that we free ourselves from the law, forgetting that the spirit of obedience and humility should grow with our possessions and power. So it comes about that those who demand the most homage make the least effort to merit the homage they demand. This is why respect is diminishing.