s, and
looked about him for his pack of vapid flatterers].

_I._--You think, then, the happy mortal has his sleep?

_He._--Think so! A sorry wretch like me! At night when I get back
to my garret, and burrow in my truckle-bed, I shrink up under my
blanket, my chest is all compressed, and I can hardly breathe; it
seems like a moan that you can barely hear. Now a banker makes the
room ring and astonishes a whole street. But what afflicts me
to-day, is not that I snore and sleep meanly and shabbily, like a
paltry outcast.

_I._--Yet that is a sorry thing enough.

_He._--What has befallen me is still more so.

_I._--What is that?

_He._--You have always taken some interest in me, because I am a
_bon diable_, whom you rather despise at bottom, but who diverts
you.

_I._--Well, that is the plain truth.

_He._--I will tell you. [Before beginning he heaved a profound
sigh, and clasped his brow with his two hands. Then he recovers his
tranquillity and says:]

You know that I am an ignoramus, a fool, a madman, an impertinent,
a sluggard, a glutton....

_I._--What a panegyric!

_He._--'Tis true to the letter, there is not a word to take away;
prithee, no debate on that. No one knows me better. I know myself
and I do not tell the whole.

_I._--I have no wish to cross you, and I will agree to anything.

_He._--Well, I used to live with people, who took a liking for me,
plainly because I was gifted with all these qualities to such a
rare degree.

_I._--That is curious. Until now I always thought that people hid
these things even from themselves, or else that they granted
themselves pardon, while they despised them in others.

_He._--Hide them from themselves! Can men do that? You may be sure
that when Palissot is all alone and returns upon himself, he tells
a very different tale; you may be sure that when he talks quietly
with his colleague, they candidly admit that they are only a pair
of mighty rogues. Despise such things in others! My people were far
more equitable, and they took my character for a perfect nonesuch;
I was in clover; they feasted me, they did not lose me from their
sight for a single instant without sighing for my return. I was
their excellent Rameau, their dear Rameau, their Rameau the mad,