Decidedly, the more I think of this excellent man, the more I reproach myself for the sort of malediction I bestowed on him when I awoke.

We are generally too indulgent in our secret wrongs toward our neighbor.  All ill-will which does not pass the region of thought seems innocent to us, and, with our clumsy justice, we excuse without examination the sin which does not betray itself by action!

But are we then bound to others only by the enforcement of laws?  Besides these external relations, is there not a real relation of feeling between men?  Do we not owe to all those who live under the same heaven as ourselves the aid not only of our acts but of our purposes?  Ought not every human life to be to us like a vessel that we accompany with our prayers for a happy voyage?  It is not enough that men do not harm one another; they must also help and love one another!  The papal benediction, ‘Urbi et orbi’! should be the constant cry from all hearts.  To condemn him who does not deserve it, even in the mind, even by a passing thought, is to break the great law, that which has established the union of souls here below, and to which Christ has given the sweet name of charity.

These thoughts came into my mind as I finished dressing, and I said to myself that Father Chaufour had a right to reparation from me.  To make amends for the feeling of ill-will I had against him just now, I owed him some explicit proof of sympathy.  I heard him humming a tune in his room; he was at work, and I determined that I would make the first neighborly call.

Eight o’clock P.M.—­I found Father Chaufour at a table lighted by a little smoky lamp, without a fire, although it is already cold, and making large pasteboard boxes; he was humming a popular song in a low tone.  I had hardly entered the room when he uttered an exclamation of surprise and pleasure.

“Eh! is it you, neighbor?  Come in, then!  I did not think you got up so early, so I put a damper on my music; I was afraid of waking you.”

Excellent man! while I was sending him to the devil he was putting himself out of his way for me!

This thought touched me, and I paid my compliments on his having become my neighbor with a warmth which opened his heart.

“Faith! you seem to me to have the look of a good Christian,” said he in a voice of soldierlike cordiality, and shaking me by the hand.  “I do not like those people who look on a landing-place as a frontier line, and treat their neighbors as if they were Cossacks.  When men snuff the same air, and speak the same lingo, they are not meant to turn their backs to each other.  Sit down there, neighbor; I don’t mean to order you; only take care of the stool; it has but three legs, and we must put good-will in place of the fourth.”

“It seems that that is a treasure which there is no want of here,” I observed.

“Good-will!” repeated Chaufour; “that is all my mother left me, and I take it no son has received a better inheritance.  Therefore they used to call me Monsieur Content in the batteries.”