Croesus’s kitchen-maid is part of him, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, for she eats what comes from his table, and, being fed of one flesh, are they not brother and sister to one another in virtue of community of nutriment, which is but a thinly veiled travesty of descent?  When she eats peas with her knife, he does so too; there is not a bit of bread and butter she puts into her mouth, nor a lump of sugar she drops into her tea, but he knoweth it altogether, though he knows nothing whatever about it.  She is en-Croesused and he en-scullery-maided so long as she remains linked to him by the golden chain which passes from his pocket to hers, and which is greatest of all unifiers.

True, neither party is aware of the connection at all as long as things go smoothly.  Croesus no more knows the name of, or feels the existence of, his kitchen-maid than a peasant in health knows about his liver; nevertheless, he is awakened to a dim sense of an undefined something when he pays his grocer or his baker.  She is more definitely aware of him than he of her, but it is by way of an overshadowing presence rather than a clear and intelligent comprehension.  And though Croesus does not eat his kitchen-maid’s meals otherwise than vicariously, still to eat vicariously is to eat:  the meals so eaten by his kitchen-maid nourish the better ordering of the dinner which nourishes and engenders the better ordering of Croesus himself.  He is fed, therefore, by the feeding of his kitchen-maid.

And so with sleep.  When she goes to bed he, in part, does so too.  When she gets up and lays the fire in the back kitchen he, in part, does so.  He lays it through her and in her, though knowing no more what he is doing than we know when we digest, but still doing it as by what we call a reflex action. Qui facit per alium facit per se, and when the back-kitchen fire is lighted on Croesus’s behalf it is Croesus who lights it, though he is all the time fast asleep in bed.

Sometimes things do not go smoothly.  Suppose the kitchen-maid to be taken with fits just before dinner-time; there will be a reverberating echo of disturbance throughout the whole organisation of the palace.  But the oftener she has fits, the more easily will the household know what it is all about when she is taken with them.  On the first occasion Lady Croesus will send some one rushing down into the kitchen; there will, in fact, be a general flow of blood (i.e. household) to the part affected (that is to say, to the scullery-maid); the doctor will be sent for and all the rest of it.  On each repetition of the fits the neighbouring organs, reverting to a more primary undifferentiated condition, will discharge duties for which they were not engaged, in a manner for which no one would have given them credit; and the disturbance will be less and less each time, till by and by, at the sound of the crockery smashing below, Lady Croesus will just look up to papa and say: