or yet of feelings;
what concerns us now is the running-gear of the great machine of
gold and iron, and its practical results with which men's lives
are occupied. Dear child of my heart, if you share my horror at
this criminal theory of the world, society will present to your
mind, as it does to all sane minds, the opposite theory of duty.
Yes, you will see that man owes himself to man in a thousand
differing ways. To my mind, the duke and peer owe far more to the
workman and the pauper than the pauper and the workman owe to the
duke. The obligations of duty enlarge in proportion to the
benefits which society bestows on men; in accordance with the
maxim, as true in social politics as in business, that the burden
of care and vigilance is everywhere in proportion to profits. Each
man pays his debt in his own way. When our poor toiler at the
Rhetoriere comes home weary with his day's work has he not done
his duty? Assuredly he has done it better than many in the ranks
above him.

If you take this view of society, in which you are about to seek a
place in keeping with your intellect and your faculties, you must
set before you as a generating principle and mainspring, this
maxim: never permit yourself to act against either your own
conscience or the public conscience. Though my entreaty may seem
to you superfluous, yet I entreat, yes, your Henriette implores
you to ponder the meaning of that rule. It seems simple but, dear,
it means that integrity, loyalty, honor, and courtesy are the
safest and surest instruments for your success. In this selfish
world you will find many to tell you that a man cannot make his
way by sentiments, that too much respect for moral considerations
will hinder his advance. It is not so; you will see men
ill-trained, ill-taught, incapable of measuring the future, who are
rough to a child, rude to an old woman, unwilling to be irked by
some worthy old man on the ground that they can do nothing for
him; later, you will find the same men caught by the thorns which
they might have rendered pointless, and missing their triumph for
some trivial reason; whereas the man who is early trained to a
sense of duty does not meet the same obstacles; he may attain
success less rapidly, but when attained it is solid and does not
crumble like that of others.

When I show you that the application of this doctrine demands in
the first pla