st
which seems to you all the clearer the farther you are removed from it.
Have you ever seen your father come home and sit down by the fire with
a tear in his eye? Then you dared not draw near him at first, so deeply
did you feel his grief. How unhappy he must be for his eyes to be
wet. Then you felt that a tie attached you to this poor man, that his
misfortune struck you too, that a part of it was yours, and that you
were smitten because your father was. And no one understands better
than the child this joint responsibility of the family to which he owes
everything. You have felt all this; your heart has swollen as you stood
silent in the corner, and sobs have broken forth as, without knowing
why, you have held out your arms toward him. He has turned, he has
understood all, he has not been able to restrain his grief any further,
and you have remained clasped in one another's arms, father, mother,
and child, without saying anything, but gazing at and understanding one
another. Did you, however, know the cause of the poor man's grief?

Not at all.

This is why filial love and paternal love have been poetized, why the
family is styled holy. It is because one finds therein the very source
of that need of loving, helping and sustaining one another, which from
time to time spreads over the whole of society, but in the shape of a
weakened echo. It is only from time to time in history that we see a
whole nation gather together, retire within itself and experience the
same thrill.

A frightful convulsion is needed to make a million men hold out their
hands to one another and understand one another at a glance; it needs
a superhuman effort for the family to become the nation, and for the
boundaries of the hearth to extend to the frontiers.

A complaint, a pang, a tear, is enough to make a man, a woman, and a
child, blend their hearts together and feel that they are but one.

Laugh at marriage; the task is easy. All human contracts are tainted
with error, and an error is always smiled at by those who are not the
victims of it. There are husbands, it is certain; and when we see a man
tumble down, even if he knocks his brains out, our first impulse it
to burst out laughing. Hence the great and eternal mirth that greets
Sganarelle.

But search to the bottom and behold that beneath all these trifles,
beneath all this dust of little exploded vanities, ridiculous mistakes
and comical passions, is hidden the very pivot of societ