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!

But at Paris nothing lasts; the current of life carries us along, like the seaweed torn from the rock; the houses are vessels which take mere passengers.  How many different faces have I already seen pass along the landing-place belonging to our attics!  How many companions of a few days have disappeared forever!  Some are lost in that medley of the living which whirls continually under the scourge of necessity, and others in that resting-place of the dead, who sleep under the hand of God!

Peter the bookbinder is one of these last.  Wrapped up in selfishness, he lived alone and friendless, and he died as he had lived.  His loss was neither mourned by any one, nor disarranged anything in the world; there was merely a ditch filled up in the graveyard, and an attic emptied in our house.

It is the same which my new neighbor has inhabited for the last few days.

To say truly (now that I am quite awake, and my ill humor is gone with my nightcap)—­to say truly, this new neighbor, although rising earlier than suits my idleness, is not the less a very good man:  he carries his misfortunes, as few know how to carry their good fortunes, with cheerfulness and moderation.

But fate has cruelly tried him.  Father Chaufour is but the wreck of a man.  In the place of one of his arms hangs an empty sleeve; his left leg is made by the turner, and he drags the right along with difficulty; but above these ruins rises a calm and happy face.  While looking upon his countenance, radiant with a serene energy, while listening to his voice, the tone of which has, so to speak, the accent of goodness, we see that the soul has remained entire in the half-destroyed covering.  The fortress is a little damaged, as Father Chaufour says, but the garrison is quite hearty.