Always to mistake feeling for evidence
     Fame and power are gifts that are dearly bought
     Fortune sells what we believe she gives
     Make himself a name:  he becomes public property
     My patronage has become her property
     Not desirous to teach goodness
     Power of necessity
     Progress can never be forced on without danger
     So much confidence at first, so much doubt at las
     The man in power gives up his peace
     Virtue made friends, but she did not take pupils
     We are not bound to live, while we are bound to do our duty

AN “ATTIC” PHILOSOPHER

(Un Philosophe sous les Toits)

By Emile Souvestre

BOOK 3.

CHAPTER X

OUR COUNTRY

October 12th, Seven O’clock A.M.

The nights are already become cold and long; the sun, shining through my curtains, no more wakens me long before the hour for work; and even when my eyes are open, the pleasant warmth of the bed keeps me fast under my counterpane.  Every morning there begins a long argument between my activity and my indolence; and, snugly wrapped up to the eyes, I wait like the Gascon, until they have succeeded in coming to an agreement.

This morning, however, a light, which shone from my door upon my pillow, awoke me earlier than usual.  In vain I turned on my side; the persevering light, like a victorious enemy, pursued me into every position.  At last, quite out of patience, I sat up and hurled my nightcap to the foot of the bed!

(I will observe, by way of parenthesis, that the various evolutions of this pacific headgear seem to have been, from the remotest time, symbols of the vehement emotions of the mind; for our language has borrowed its most common images from them.)

But be this as it may, I got up in a very bad humor, grumbling at my new neighbor, who took it into his head to be wakeful when I wished to sleep.  We are all made thus; we do not understand that others may live on their own account.  Each one of us is like the earth, according to the old system of Ptolemy, and thinks he can have the whole universe revolve around himself.  On this point, to make use of the metaphor alluded to:  ‘Tous les hommes ont la tete dans le meme bonnet’.

I had for the time being, as I have already said, thrown mine to the other end of my bed; and I slowly disengaged my legs from the warm bedclothes, while making a host of evil reflections upon the inconvenience of having neighbors.

For more than a month I had not had to complain of those whom chance had given me; most of them only came in to sleep, and went away again on rising.  I was almost always alone on this top story—­alone with the clouds and the sparrows!