16th, P.M.—­I have been thinking of the story of the old cashier these two days; it came so opportunely upon the reflections my dream had suggested to me.

Have I not an important lesson to learn from all this?

If our sensations have an incontestable influence upon our judgments, how comes it that we are so little careful of those things which awaken or modify these sensations?  The external world is always reflected in us as in a mirror, and fills our minds with pictures which, unconsciously to ourselves, become the germs of our opinions and of our rules of conduct.  All the objects which surround us are then, in reality, so many talismans whence good and evil influences are emitted, and it is for us to choose them wisely, so as to create a healthy atmosphere for our minds.

Feeling convinced of this truth, I set about making a survey of my attic.

The first object on which my eyes rest is an old map of the history of the principal monastery in my native province.  I had unrolled it with much satisfaction, and placed it on the most conspicuous part of the wall.  Why had I given it this place?  Ought this sheet of old worm-eaten parchment to be of so much value to me, who am neither an antiquary nor a scholar?  Is not its real importance in my sight that one of the abbots who founded it bore my name, and that I shall, perchance, be able to make myself a genealogical tree of it for the edification of my visitors?  While writing this, I feel my own blushes.  Come, down with the map! let us banish it into my deepest drawer.

As I passed my glass, I perceived several visiting cards complacently displayed in the frame.  By what chance is it that there are only names that make a show among them?  Here is a Polish count—­a retired colonel—­the deputy of my department.  Quick, quick, into the fire with these proofs of vanity! and let us put this card in the handwriting of our office-boy, this direction for cheap dinners, and the receipt of the broker where I bought my last armchair, in their place.  These indications of my poverty will serve, as Montaigne says, ‘mater ma superbe’, and will always make me recollect the modesty in which the dignity of the lowly consists.

I have stopped before the prints hanging upon the wall.  This large and smiling Pomona, seated on sheaves of corn, and whose basket is overflowing with fruit, only produces thoughts of joy and plenty; I was looking at her the other day, when I fell asleep denying such a thing as misery.  Let us give her as companion this picture of Winter, in which everything tells of sorrow and suffering:  one picture will modify the other.

And this Happy Family of Greuze’s!  What joy in the children’s eyes!  What sweet repose in the young woman’s face!  What religious feeling in the grandfather’s countenance!  May God preserve their happiness to them! but let us hang by its side the picture of this mother, who weeps over an empty cradle.  Human life has two faces, both of which we must dare to contemplate in their turn.