hen some evening a warm
breeze, laden with the scents of the plain, blows through his green locks
and overwhelms him with kisses. No, I do not accept the hypothesis of a
world made for us. Childish pride, which would be ridiculous did not its
very simplicity lend it something poetic, alone inspires it. Man is but
one of the links of an immense chain, of the two ends of which we are
ignorant. [See Mark Twain's essay: 'What is Man.' D.W.]

Is it not consoling to fancy that we are not an isolated power to which
the remainder of the world serves as a pedestal, that one is not a
licensed destroyer, a poor, fragile tyrant, whom arbitrary decrees
protect, but a necessary note of an infinite harmony? To fancy that the
law of life is the same in the immensity of space and irradiates worlds
as it irradiates cities and as it irradiates ant-hills. To fancy that
each vibration in ourselves is the echo of another vibration. To fancy a
sole principle, a primordial axiom, to think the universe envelops us as
a mother clasps her child in her two arms; and say to one's self, "I
belong to it and it to me; it would cease to be without me. I should not
exist without it." To see, in short, only the divine unity of laws, which
could not be nonexistent, where others have only seen a ruling fancy or
an individual caprice.

It is a dream. Perhaps so, but I have often dreamed it when watching the
village children rolling on the fresh grass among the ducklings.

CHAPTER XXXI

AUTUMN

Do you know the autumn, dear reader, autumn away in the country with its
squalls, its long gusts, its yellow leaves whirling in the distance, its
sodden paths, its fine sunsets, pale as an invalid's smile, its pools of
water in the roadway; do you know all these? If you have seen all these
they are certainly not indifferent to you. One either detests or else
loves them.

I am of the number of those who love them, and I would give two summers
for a single autumn. I adore the big blazing fires; I like to take refuge
in the chimney corner with my dog between my wet gaiters. I like to watch
the tall flames licking the old ironwork and lighting up the black
depths. You hear the wind whistling in the stable, the great door creak,
the dog pull at his chain and howl, and, despite the noise of the forest
trees which are groaning and bending close by, you can make out the
lugubrious cawings of a flock of rooks struggling against the storm. The
rain beats against th