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<strong>MORAL USE OF IORIES</strong><strong>November 13th, Nine Oclock P.M.
</strong>
I had well stopped up the ks of my wi<tt></tt>ndow; my little carpet wasnailed down in its place; my lamp, provided with its shade, cast asubdued light around, and my stove made a low, murmuring sound, as ifsome live creature was sharing my hearth with me.
All was silent around me. But, out of doors the snow and raiheroofs, and with a low, rushing sound ran along the gurgling gutters;sometimes a gust of wind forced itself beh the tiles, which rattledtogether like castas, and afterward it was lost in the empty corridor.
Then a slight and pleasurable shiver thrilled through my veins: I drewthe flaps of my old wadded dressing-gown around me, I pulled mythreadbare velvet cap over my eyes, and, letting myself sink deeper intomy easy-chair, while my feet basked in the heat and light which shohrough the door of the stove, I gave myself up to a sensation ofenjoyment, made more lively by the sciousness of the storm which ragedwithout. My eyes, swimming in a sort of mist, wandered over all thedetails of my peaceful abode; they passed from my prints to my bookcase,resting upotle tz sofa, the white curtains of the iroead, and the portfolio of loose papers--those archives <bdi>.99ｌib?</bdi>of theattics; and theurning to the book I held in my hand, they attemptedto seize once more the thread of the reading which had been thusinterrupted.
In fact, this book, the subject of which had at first ied me, hadbee painful to me. I had e to the clusion that the pictures ofthe writer were too sombre. His description of the miseries of the worldappeared exaggerated to me; I could not believe in such excess of povertyand of suffering; her God nor man could show themselves so harshtoward the sons of Adam. The author had yielded to an artistictemptation: he was making a show of the sufferings of humanity, as Neroburned Rome for the sake of the picturesque.
Taken altogether, this poor human house, so often repaired, so muchcriticised, is still a pretty good abode; we may find enough in it tosatisfy our wants, if we know how to set bounds to them; the happiness ofthe wise man costs but little, and asks but little space.
These soling refles became more and more fused. At last mybook fell on the ground without my having the resolution to stoop andtake it up again; and insensibly overe by the luxury of the silehe subdued light, and the warmth, I fell asleep.
I remained for some time lost in the sort of insensibility belonging toa first sleep; at last some vague and brokeions came over me.
It seemed to me that the day grew darker, that the air became colder.
I half perceived bushes covered with the scarlet berries which foretellthe ing of winter. I walked on a dreary road, bordered here and therewith jurees white with frost. Then the se suddenly ged.
I was in the diligehe cold wind shook the doors and windows; thetrees, loaded with snow, passed by like ghosts; in vain I thrust mybenumbed feet into the crushed straw. At last the carriage stopped, and,by one of those stage effects so on in sleep, I found myself alone ina barn, without a fireplace, and open to the winds on all sides. I sawagain my mentle face, known only to me in my early childhood,the noble and stern tenany father, the little fair head of mysister, who was taken from us at ten years old; all my dead family livedagain arouhey were there, exposed to the bitings of the cold andto the pangs of hunger. My mother prayed by the resigned old man, and mysister, rolled up on ss of which they had made her a bed, wept insilence, and held her naked feet in her little blue hands.
It age from the book I had just read transferred into my owence.
My heart pressed with inexpressible anguish. Crouched in a er,with my eyes fixed upon this dismal picture, I felt the cold slowlycreeping upon me, and I said to myself with bitterness:
"Let us die, since poverty is a dungeon guarded by suspi, apathy, andpt, and from which it is vain to try to escape; let us die, sihere is no place for us at the ba of the living!"
And I tried to rise to join my main, and to wait at her feet forthe hour of release.
This effort dispelled my dream, and I awoke with a start.
I looked around me; my lamp was expiring, the fire in my stoveextinguished, and my half-opened door was letting in an icy wind.
I got up, with a shiver, to shut and double-lock it; then I made forthe alcove, ao bed in haste.
But the cold kept me awake a long time, and my thoughts tiheinterrupted dream.
The pictures I had lately accused of exaggeration now seemed but a toofaithful representation of reality; and I went to sleep without beingable to recover my optimism--or my warmth.
Thus did a cold stove and a badly closed door alter my point of view.
All went well when my blood circulated properly; all looked gloomy whenthe cold laid hold on me.
This reminds me of the story of the duchess who was obliged to pay avisit to the neighb vent on a winters day. The vent oor, there was no wood, and the monks had nothing but their disciplineand the ardor of their prayers to keep out the cold. The duchess, whowas shivering with cold, returned home, greatly pitying the poor monks.
While the servants were taking off her cloak and adding two more logs toher fire, she called her steward, whom she ordered to send some wood tothe vent immediately. She then had her couch moved close to thefireside, the warmth of which soon revived her. The recolle of whatshe had just suffered eedily lost in her present fort, wheeward came in again to ask how many loads of wood he was to send.
"Oh! you may wait," said the great lady carelessly; "the weather is verymuch milder."
Thus, mans judgments are formed less from reason than from sensation;and as sensation es to him from the outward world, so he finds himselfmore or less us influence; by little and little he imbibes aportion of his habits and feelings from it.
It is not, then, without cause that, when we wish to judge of a strangerbeforehand, we look for indications of his character in the circumstanceswhich surround him. The things among which we live are necessarily madeto take our image, and we unsciously leave in them a thousandimpressions of our minds. As we judge by ay bed of the heightand attitude of him who has slept in it, so the abode of every mandiscovers to a close observer the extent of his intelligend thefeelings of his heart. Bernardi.-Pierre has related the story ofa young girl who refused a suitor because he would never have flowers ordomestiimals in his house. Perhaps the sentence was severe, but notwithout reason. resume that a man insensible to beauty and tohumble affeust be ill prepared to feel the enjoyments of a happymarriage.
14th, seven oclock P.M.--This m, as I ening my journal towrite, I had a visit from our old cashier.
His sight is not so good as it was, his hand begins to shake, and thework he was able to do formerly is now being somewhat laborious tohim. I had uaken to write out some of his papers, and he came forthose I had finished.
We versed a long time by the stove, while he was drinking a cup ofcoffee which I made him take.
M. Rateau is a sensible man, who has observed mud speaks little; sothat he has always something to say.
While looking over the ats I had prepared for him, his look fellupon my journal, and I was obliged to aowledge that in this way Iwrote a diary of my as and thoughts every evening for private use.
From ohing to another, I began speaking to him of my dream the daybefore, and my refles about the influence of outward objects uponour ordinary ses. He smiled.
"Ah! you, too, have my superstitions," he said, quietly. "I have alwaysbelieved, like you, that you may know the game by the lair: it is onlynecessary to have tad experience; but without them we itourselves to many rash judgments. For my part. I have been guilty ofthis more than once, but sometimes I have also drawn a right clusion.
I recollect especially an adventure which goes as far back as the firstyears of my youth--"
He stopped. I looked at him as if I waited for his story, aold itme at once.
At this time he was still but third clerk to an attor Orleans. Hismaster had sent him to Mis on different affairs, aeoreturn in the diligehe same evening, after having received theamount of a bill at a neighb town; but they kept him at the debtorshouse, and when he was able to set out the day had already closed.
Fearing not to be able to reach Mis in good time, he took acrossroad they pointed out to him. Unfortuhe fog increased,no star was visible in the heavens, and the darkness became so great thathe lost his road. He tried to retrace his steps, passed twentyfootpaths, and at last was pletely astray.
After the vexation of losing his pla the diligence, came the feelingof uneasiness as to his situation. He was alone, on foot, lost in aforest, without any means of finding his right road again, and with asiderable sum of money about him, for which he was responsible. Hisay was increased by his inexperiehe idea of a forest wasected in his mind with so many adventures of robbery and murder,that he expected some fatal enter every instant.
To say the truth, his situation was not encing. The place was notsidered safe, and for some time past there had been rumors of thesudden disappearance of several horse-dealers, though there was no traceof any crime having been itted.
Our young traveller, with his eyes staring forward, and his earslistening, followed a footpath which he supposed might take him to somehouse or road; but woods always succeeded to woods. At last he perceiveda light at a distance, and in a quarter of an hour he reached thehighroad.
A single house, the light from which had attracted him, appeared at alittle distance. He was going toward the entrae of the courtyard,wherot of a horse made him turn his head. A man on horseback hadjust appeared at the turning of the road, and in an instant was close tohim.
The first words he addressed to the young man showed him to be the farmerhimself. He related how he had lost himself, and learned from thetryman that he was on the road to Pithiviers. Mis was threeleagues behind him.
The fog had insensibly ged into a drizzling rain, which was beginningto wet the young clerk through; he seemed afraid of the distance he hadstill to go, and the horseman, who saw his hesitation, invited him toe into the farmhouse.
It had something of the look of a fortress. Surrounded by a pretty highwall, it could not be seen except through the bars of the great gate,which was carefully closed. The farmer, who had got off his horse, didnot go near it, but, turning to the right, reached another entranceclosed in the same way, but of which he had the key.
Hardly had he passed the threshold when a terrible barking resoundedfrom ead of the yard. The farmer told his guest to fear nothing,and showed him the dogs ed up to their kennels; both were of araordinary size, and so savage that the sight of their master himselfcould not quiet them.
A boy, attracted by their barking, came out of the house and took thefarmers horse. The latter begaioning him about some orders hehad given before he left the house, aoward the stable to seethat they had beeed.
Thus left alone, our clerk looked about him.
A lantern which the boy had placed on the ground cast a dim light overthe courtyard. All around seemed empty aed. Not a trace wasvisible of the disorder often seen in a try farmyard, and which showsa temporary cessation of the work which is soon to be resumed again.
her a cart fottehe horses had been unharnessed, norsheaves of heaped up ready for threshing, nor a plow overturned in aer and half hidden uhe freshly-cut clover. The yard was swept,the barns shut up and padlocked. Not a single vine creeping up thewalls; everywhere stone, wood, and iron!
He took up the lantern a up to the er of the house. Behindwas a sed yard, where he heard the barking of a third dog, and acovered wall was built in the middle of it.
Our traveller looked in vain for the little farm garden, where pumpkinsof different sorts creep along the ground, or where the bees from thehives hum uhe hedges of honeysuckle and elder. Verdure and flowerswere o be seen. He did not even perceive the sight of apoultry-yard eon-house. The habitation of his host was everywherewanting in that which makes the grad the life of the try.
The young man thought that his host must be of a very careless or a verycalculating disposition, to cede so little to domestijoyments andthe pleasures of the eye; and judging, in spite of himself, by what hesaw, he could not help feeling a distrust of his character.
In the mean time the farmer returned from the stables, and made him ehe house.
The inside of the farmhouse correspoo its outside. The whitewashedwalls had no other orhan a row of guns of all sizes; the massivefurniture hardly redeemed its clumsy appearance by its great solidity.
The liness was doubtful, and the absence of all minor veniencesproved that a womans care was wanting in the household s. Theyoung clerk learhat the farmer, in fact, lived here with no ohis two sons.
Of this, ihe signs were plain enough. A table with the clothlaid, that no one had takerouble to clear away, was left hewindow. The plates and dishes were scattered upon it without any order,and loaded with potats and half-picked bones. Several emptybottles emitted an odor of brandy, mixed with the pu smell oftobaoke.
After seating his guest, the farmer lighted his pipe, and his two sonsresumed their work by the fireside. Now and then the silence was justbroken by a short remark, answered by a word or an exclamation; and thenall became as mute as before.
"From my childhood," said the old cashier, "I had been very sensible tothe impression of outward objects; later in life, refle had taughtme to study the causes of these impressions rather than to drive themaway. I set myself, then, to examine everything arouh greatattention.
"Below the guns, I had remarked oering, some wolftraps weresuspended, and to one of them still hung the mangled remains of a wolfspaw, which they had not yet taken off from the iroh. The blaedeypiece was ored by an owl and a raven nailed on the wall,their wiended, and their throats with a huge nail through each; afoxs skin, freshly flayed, read before the window; and a larderhook, fixed into the principal beam, held a headless goose, whose bodyswayed about over our heads.
"My eyes were offended by all these details, and I turhem again uponmy hosts. The father, who sat opposite to me, only interrupted hissmoking to pour out his drink, or address some reprimand to his sons.
The eldest of these was scraping a deep bucket, and the bloody scrapings,which he threw into the fire every instant, filled the room with adisagreeable fetid smell; the sed son was sharpening some butchersknives. I learned from a word dropped from the father that they werepreparing to kill a pig the day.
"These occupations and the whole aspect of things ihe house toldof such habitual coarseness in their way of living as seemed to explain,while it formed the fitting terpart of, the forbidding gloominess ofthe outside. My astonishment by degrees ged into disgust, and mydisgust into uneasiness. I ot detail the whole of ideas whichsucceeded one another in my imagination; but, yielding to an impulse Icould not overe, I got up, declaring I would go on my road again.
"The farmer made some effort to keep me; he spoke of the rain, of thedarkness, and of the length of the way. I replied to all by the absolutey there was for my being at Mis that very night; andthanking him for his brief hospitality, I set off again in a haste whichmight well have firmed the truth of my words to him.
"However, the freshness of the night and the exercise of walking did notfail to ge the dires of my thoughts. When away from the objectswhich had awakened such lively disgust in me, I felt it graduallydiminishing. I began to smile at the susceptibility of my feelings,and then, in proportion as the rain became heavier and colder, thesestrictures on myself assumed a tone of ill-temper. I silently accusedmyself of the absurdity of mistakiion for admonitions of myreason. After all, were not the farmer and his sons free to live aloo hunt, to keep dogs, and to kill a pig? Where was the crime of it?
With less nervous susceptibility, I should have accepted the shelter theyoffered me, and I should now be sleeping snugly on a truss of straw,instead of walking with difficulty through the cold and drizzling rain.
I thus tio reproach myself, until, toward m, I arrived atMis, jaded and benumbed with cold.
"When, however, I got up refreshed, toward the middle of the day,I instinctively returo my first opinion. The appearance of thefarmhouse preseself to me uhe same repulsive colors whichthe evening before had determined me to make my escape from it. Reasonitself remained silent when reviewing all those coarse details, and wasforced tnize ihe indications of a low nature, or else thepresence of some baleful influence.
"I went away the day without being able to learn anything ingthe farmer or his sons; but the recolle of my adventure remaineddeeply fixed in my memory.
"Ten years afterward I was travelling in the diligehrough thedepartment of the Loiret; I was leaning from the window, and looking atsome coppice ground now for the first time brought under cultivation, andthe mode of clearing whie of my travelling panions was explainingto me, when my eyes fell upon a walled inclosure, with an iron-barredgate. I I perceived a house with all the blinds closed, andwhich I immediately recollected; it was the farmhouse where I had beeered. I eagerly poi out to my panion, and asked who livedin it.
"Nobody just now, replied he.
"But was it not kept, some years ago, by a farmer and his two sons?
"The Turreaus; said my travelling panion, looking at me; did youknow them?
"I saw them once.
"He shook his head.
"Yes, yes! resumed he; for many years they lived there like wolves intheir den; they merely knew how to till land, kill game, and drink. Thefather mahe house, but men living alone, without women to lovethem, without children to soften them, and without God to make them thinkof heaven, always turn into wild beasts, you see; so one m theeldest son, who had been drinking too much brandy, would not harheplow-horses; his father struck him with his whip, and the son, who wasmad drunk, shot him dead with his gun."
16th, P.M.--I have been thinking of the story of the old cashier thesetwo days; it came so opportunely upon the refley dream hadsuggested to me.
Have I not an important lesson to learn from all this?
If our sensations have an intestable influence upon our judgments,how es it that we are so little careful of those things which awakenor modify these sensations? The external world is always reflected in usas in a mirror, and fills our minds with pictures which, unsciously toourselves, bee the germs of our opinions and of our rules of duct.
All the objects which surround us are then, iy, so many talismanswhence good and evil influences are emitted, and it is for us to choosethem wisely, so as to create a healthy atmosphere for our minds.
Feeling vinced of this truth, I set about making a survey of my attic.
The first obje which my eyes rest is an old map of the history ofthe principal monastery in my native province. I had unrolled it withmuch satisfa, and placed it on the most spicuous part of thewall. Why had I given it this place? Ought this sheet of old worm-eatenpart to be of so much value to me, who am her an antiquary nor ascholar? Is not its real importan my sight that one of the abbotswho fou bore my name, and that I shall, perce, be able to makemyself a genealogical tree of it ..for the edification of my visitors?
While writing this, I f<u></u>eel my own blushes. e, down with the map!
let us banish it into my deepest drawer.
As I passed my glass, I perceived several visiting cards platlydisplayed in the frame. By what ce is it that there are only hat make a show among them? Here is a Polish t--a retired el--the deputy of my department. Quick, quick, into the fire with theseproofs of vanity! a us put this card in the handwriting of ouroffice-boy, this dire for cheap dinners, and the receipt of thebroker where I bought my last armchair, in their place. Theseindications of my poverty will serve, as Montaigne says, mater masuperbe, and will always make me recollect the modesty in which thedignity of the lowly sists.
I have stopped before the prints hanging upon the wall. This large andsmiling Pomona, seated on sheaves of , and whose basket isoverflowing with fruit, only produces thoughts of joy and plenty; I waslooking at her the other day, when I fell asleep denying such a thing asmisery. Let us give her as panion this picture of Winter, in whicheverything tells of sorrow and suffering: one picture will modify theother.
And this Happy Family of Greuzes! What joy in the childrens eyes!
What sweet repose in the young womans face! What religious feeling inthe grandfathers tenance! May God preserve their happio them!
but let us hang by its side the picture of this mother, who weeps over ay cradle. Human life has two faces, both of which we must dare toplate iurn.
Let me hide, too, these ridionsters whient myeypiece. Plato has said that "the beautiful is nothing else thanthe visible form of the good." If it is so, the ugly should be thevisible form of the evil, and, by stantly beholding it, the mindinsensibly deteriorates.
But above all, in order to cherish the feelings of kindness and pity, letme hang at the foot of my bed this affeg picture of the Last Sleep!
Never have I been able to look at it without feeling my heart touched.
An old woman, clothed in rags, is lying by a roadside; her stick is ather feet, and her head rests upon a stone; she has fallen asleep; herhands are clasped; murmuring a prayer of her childhood, she sleeps herlast sleep, she dreams her last dream!
She sees herself, again a strong and happy child, keeping the sheep onthe on, gathering the berries from the hedges, singing, curtsying topassers-by, and making the sign of the cross when the first star appearsin the heavens! Happy time, filled with fragrand sunshine! Shewants nothi, for she is ignorant of what there is to wish for.
But see her grown up; the time is e for w bravely: she must cutthe , thresh the wheat, carry the bundles of fl clover orbranches of withered leaves to the farm. If her toil is hard, hopeshines like a sun over everything and it wipes the drops of sweat away.
The growing girl already sees that life is a task, but she still sings asshe fulfills it.
By-and-bye the burden bees heavier; she is a wife, she is a mother!
She must eize the bread of to-day, have her eye upon the morrow,take care of the sick, and sustain the feeble; she must act, in short,that part of ahly Providence, so easy when God gives us his aid,so hard when he forsakes us. She is still strong, but she is anxious;she sings no longer!
Yet a few years, and all is overcast. The husbands health is broken;his wife sees him pine away by the now fireless hearth; cold and hungerfinish what siess had begun; he dies, and his widow sits on the groundby the coffin provided by the charity of others, pressiwo half-naked little ones in her arms. She dreads the future, she weeps, and shedroops her head.
At last the future has e; the children are grown up, but they are nolonger with her. Her son is fighting under his trys flag, and hissister is gone. Both have been lost to her for a long time--perhapsforever; and the strong girl, the brave wife, the ceous mother, isheh only a poor old beggar-woman, without a family, and without ahome! She weeps no more, sorrow has subdued her; she surrenders, andwaits for death.
Death, that faithful friend of the wretched, is e: not hideous andwith mockery, as superstition represents, but beautiful, smiling, anded with stars! The gentle phantom stoops to the beggar; its palelips murmur a few airy words, whinouo her the end of herlabors; a peaceful joy es over the aged beggarwoman, and, leaning onthe shoulder of the great Deliverer, she has passed unsciously fromher last earthly sleep to her eternal rest.
Lie there, thou poor way-wearied woman! The leaves will serve thee for awinding-sheet. Night will shed her tears of dew over thee, and the birdswill sing sweetly by thy remains. Thy visit here below will not haveleft more trace than their flight through the air; thy name is alreadyfotten, and the only legacy thou hast to leave is the hawthorn sticklying fotten at thy feet!
Well! some one will take it up--some soldier of that great human hostwhich is scattered abroad by misery or by vice; for thou art not aion, thou art an instance; and uhe same sun which shines sopleasantly upon all, in the midst of these fl vineyards, this ripe, and these wealthy cities, entire geions suffer, succeed eachother, and still bequeath to each the beggars stick!
The sight of this sad picture shall make me mrateful for what Godhas given me, and more passionate for those whom he has treated withless indulge shall be a lesson and a subject for refle forme.
Ah! if we would watch for everything that might improve and instruct us;if the arras of our daily life were so disposed as to be astant school for our minds! but ofte we take no heed of them.
Man is aernal mystery to himself; his own person is a house intowhich he never enters, and of which he studies the outside alone. Eachof us need have tinually before him the famous inscription whistructed Socrates, and which was engraved on the walls of Delphi by anunknown hand:
KNOW THYSELF.
百度搜索 屋顶间的哲学家 天涯 或 屋顶间的哲学家 天涯在线书库 即可找到本书最新章节.