..........................

I am just come back from taking them home; and have left them delighted with their day, the recollection of which will long make them happy.  This morning I was pitying those whose lives are obscure and joyless; now, I understand that God has provided a compensation with every trial.  The smallest pleasure derives from rarity a relish otherwise unknown.  Enjoyment is only what we feel to be such, and the luxurious man feels no longer:  satiety has destroyed his appetite, while privation preserves to the other that first of earthly blessings:  the being easily made happy.  Oh, that I could persuade every one of this! that so the rich might not abuse their riches, and that the poor might have patience.  If happiness is the rarest of blessings, it is because the reception of it is the rarest of virtues.

Madeleine and Frances! ye poor old maids whose courage, resignation, and generous hearts are your only wealth, pray for the wretched who give themselves up to despair; for the unhappy who hate and envy; and for the unfeeling into whose enjoyments no pity enters.

     ETEXT editor’s bookmarks: 

     Brought them up to poverty
     Carn-ival means, literally, “farewell to flesh!”
     Coffee is the grand work of a bachelor’s housekeeping
     Defeat and victory only displace each other by turns
     Did not think the world was so great
     Do they understand what makes them so gay? 
     Each of us regards himself as the mirror of the community
     Ease with which the poor forget their wretchedness
     Every one keeps his holidays in his own way
     Favorite and conclusive answer of his class—­“I know”
     Fear of losing a moment from business
     Finishes his sin thoroughly before he begins to repent
     Her kindness, which never sleeps
     Hubbub of questions which waited for no reply
     Moderation is the great social virtue
     No one is so unhappy as to have nothing to give
     Our tempers are like an opera-glass
     Poverty, you see, is a famous schoolmistress
     Prisoners of work
     Question is not to discover what will suit us
     Ruining myself, but we must all have our Carnival
     Two thirds of human existence are wasted in hesitation
     What a small dwelling joy can live

AN “ATTIC” PHILOSOPHER

(Un Philosophe sous les Toits)

By Emile Souvestre

BOOK 2.

CHAPTER VI

UNCLE MAURICE

June 7th, Four O’clock A.M.

I am not surprised at hearing, when I awake, the birds singing so joyfully outside my window; it is only by living, as they and I do, in a top story, that one comes to know how cheerful the mornings really are up among the roofs.  It is there that the sun sends his first rays, and the breeze comes with the fragrance of the gardens and woods; there that a wandering butterfly sometimes ventures among the flowers of the attic, and that the songs of the industrious work-woman welcome the dawn of day.  The lower stories are still deep in sleep, silence, and shadow, while here labor, light, and song already reign.