And why this insatiable craving for riches?  Does a man drink more when he drinks from a large glass?  Whence comes that universal dread of mediocrity, the fruitful mother of peace and liberty?  Ah! there is the evil which, above every other, it should be the aim of both public and private education to anticipate!  If that were got rid of, what treasons would be spared, what baseness avoided, what a chain of excess and crime would be forever broken!  We award the palm to charity, and to self-sacrifice; but, above all, let us award it to moderation, for it is the great social virtue.  Even when it does not create the others, it stands instead of them.

Six o’clock.—­I have written a letter of thanks to the promoters of the new speculation, and have declined their offer!  This decision has restored my peace of mind.  I stopped singing, like the cobbler, as long as I entertained the hope of riches:  it is gone, and happiness is come back!

O beloved and gentle Poverty! pardon me for having for a moment wished to fly from thee, as I would from Want.  Stay here forever with thy charming sisters, Pity, Patience, Sobriety, and Solitude; be ye my queens and my instructors; teach me the stern duties of life; remove far from my abode the weakness of heart and giddiness of head which follow prosperity.  Holy Poverty! teach me to endure without complaining, to impart without grudging, to seek the end of life higher than in pleasure, farther off than in power.  Thou givest the body strength, thou makest the mind more firm; and, thanks to thee, this life, to which the rich attach themselves as to a rock, becomes a bark of which death may cut the cable without awakening all our fears.  Continue to sustain me, O thou whom Christ hath called Blessed!

CHAPTER IV

LET US LOVE ONE ANOTHER

April 9th

The fine evenings are come back; the trees begin to put forth their shoots; hyacinths, jonquils, violets, and lilacs perfume the baskets of the flower-girls—­all the world have begun their walks again on the quays and boulevards.  After dinner, I, too, descend from my attic to breathe the evening air.

It is the hour when Paris is seen in all its beauty.  During the day the plaster fronts of the houses weary the eye by their monotonous whiteness; heavily laden carts make the streets shake under their huge wheels; the eager crowd, taken up by the one fear of losing a moment from business, cross and jostle one another; the aspect of the city altogether has something harsh, restless, and flurried about it.  But, as soon as the stars appear, everything is changed; the glare of the white houses is quenched in the gathering shades; you hear no more any rolling but that of the carriages on their way to some party of pleasure; you see only the lounger or the light-hearted passing by; work has given place to leisure.  Now each one may breathe after the fierce race through the business