And sometimes we are lightly touched with boredom.

* * * * * *

One evening Marie informed me that the canary was dead, and she began to cry, as she showed me the open cage and the bird which lay at the bottom, with its feet curled up, as rumpled and stark as the little yellow plaything of a doll.  I sympathized with her sorrow; but her tears were endless, and I found her emotion disproportionate.

“Come now,” I said, “after all, a bird’s only a bird, a mere point that moved a little in a corner of the room.  What then?  What about the thousands of birds that die, and the people that die, and the poor?” But she shook her head, insisted on grieving, tried to prove to me that it was momentous and that she was right.

For a moment I stood bewildered by this want of understanding; this difference between her way of feeling and mine.  It was a disagreeable revelation of the unknown.  One might often, in regard to small matters, make a multitude of reflections if one wished; but one does not wish.

* * * * * *

My position at the factory and in our quarter is becoming gradually stronger.  By reason of a regular gratuity which I received, we are at last able to put money aside each month, like everybody.

“I say!” cried Crillon, pulling me outside with him, as I was coming in one evening; “I must let you know that you’ve been spoken of spontanially for the Town Council at the next renewment.  They’re making a big effort, you know.  Monsieur the Marquis is going to stand for the legislative elections—­but we’ve walked into the other quarter,” said Crillon, stopping dead.  “Come back, come back.”

We turned right-about-face.

“This patriotic society of Monsieur Joseph,” Crillon went on, “has done a lot of harm to the anarchists.  We’ve all got to let ’em feel our elbows, that’s necessential.  You’ve got a foot in the factory, eh?  You see the workmen; have a crack of talk with ’em.  You ingreasiate yourself with ’em, so’s some of ’em’ll vote for you.  For them’s the danger.”

“It’s true that I am very sympathetic to them,” I murmured, impressed by this prospect.

Crillon came to a stand in front of the Public Baths.  “It’s the seventeenth to-day,” he explained; “the day of the month when I takes a bath.  Oh, yes!  I know that you go every Thursday; but I’m not of that mind.  You’re young, of course, and p’raps you have good reason!  But you take my tip, and hobnob with the working man.  We must bestir ourselves and impell ourselves, what the devil!  As for me, I’ve finished my political efforts for peace and order.  It’s your turn!”

He is right.  Looking at the ageing man, I note that his framework is slightly bowed; that his ill-shaven cheeks are humpbacked with little ends of hair turning into white crystals.  In his lowly sphere he has done his duty.  I reflect upon the mite-like efforts of the unimportant people; of the mountains of tasks performed by anonymity.  They are necessary, these hosts of people so closely resembling each other; for cities are built upon the poor brotherhood of paving-stones.