Thus converse these idiots, without even lowering their voice.  You hear, and remain mechanically amiable.  If you are ill, your masters will send for the doctor—­not their own.  Occasionally they may even inquire after you.  Being of a different species from you, and at an inaccessible height above you, they are affable.  Their height makes them easy.  They know that equality is impossible.  By force of disdain they are polite.  At table they give you a little nod.  Sometimes they absolutely know how your name is spelt!  They only show that they are your protectors by walking unconsciously over all the delicacy and susceptibility you possess.  They treat you with good-nature.  Is all this to be borne?

No doubt he was eager to punish Josiana.  He must teach her with whom she had to deal!

O my rich gentry, because you cannot eat up everything, because opulence produces indigestion seeing that your stomachs are no bigger than ours, because it is, after all, better to distribute the remainder than to throw it away, you exalt a morsel flung to the poor into an act of magnificence.  Oh, you give us bread, you give us shelter, you give us clothes, you give us employment, and you push audacity, folly, cruelty, stupidity, and absurdity to the pitch of believing that we are grateful!  The bread is the bread of servitude, the shelter is a footman’s bedroom, the clothes are a livery, the employment is ridiculous, paid for, it is true, but brutalizing.

Oh, you believe in the right to humiliate us with lodging and nourishment, and you imagine that we are your debtors, and you count on our gratitude!  Very well; we will eat up your substance, we will devour you alive and gnaw your heart-strings with our teeth.

This Josiana!  Was it not absurd?  What merit had she?  She had accomplished the wonderful work of coming into the world as a testimony of the folly of her father and the shame of her mother.  She had done us the favour to exist, and for her kindness in becoming a public scandal they paid her millions; she had estates and castles, warrens, parks, lakes, forests, and I know not what besides, and with all that she was making a fool of herself, and verses were addressed to her!  And Barkilphedro, who had studied and laboured and taken pains, and stuffed his eyes and his brain with great books, who had grown mouldy in old works and in science, who was full of wit, who could command armies, who could, if he would, write tragedies like Otway and Dryden, who was made to be an emperor—­Barkilphedro had been reduced to permit this nobody to prevent him from dying of hunger.  Could the usurpation of the rich, the hateful elect of chance, go further?  They put on the semblance of being generous to us, of protecting us, and of smiling on us, and we would drink their blood and lick our lips after it!  That this low woman of the court should have the odious power of being a benefactress, and that a man so superior should