monastery in my native province. I had unrolled it with
much satisfaction, and placed it on the most conspicuous part of the
wall. Why had I given it this place? Ought this sheet of old worm-eaten
parchment to be of so much value to me, who am neither an antiquary nor
a scholar? Is not its real importance in my sight that one of the abbots
who founded it bore my name, and that I shall, perchance, be able
to make myself a genealogical tree of it for the edification of my
visitors? While writing this, I feel my own blushes. Come, down with the
map! let us banish it into my deepest drawer.

As I passed my glass, I perceived several visiting cards complacently
displayed in the frame. By what chance is it that there are only
names that make a show among them? Here is a Polish count--a retired
colonel--the deputy of my department. Quick, quick, into the fire with
these proofs of vanity! and let us put this card in the handwriting of
our office-boy, this direction for cheap dinners, and the receipt of
the broker where I bought my last armchair, in their place. These
indications of my poverty will serve, as Montaigne says, 'mater ma
superbe', and will always make me recollect the modesty in which the
dignity of the lowly consists.

I have stopped before the prints hanging upon the wall. This large
and smiling Pomona, seated on sheaves of corn, and whose basket is
overflowing with fruit, only produces thoughts of joy and plenty; I was
looking at her the other day, when I fell asleep denying such a thing
as misery. Let us give her as companion this picture of Winter, in which
everything tells of sorrow and suffering: one picture will modify the
other.

And this Happy Family of Greuze's! What joy in the children's eyes! What
sweet repose in the young woman's face! What religious feeling in the
grandfather's countenance! May God preserve their happiness to them! but
let us hang by its side the picture of this mother, who weeps over an
empty cradle. Human life has two faces, both of which we must dare to
contemplate in their turn.

Let me hide, too, these ridiculous monsters which ornament my
chimneypiece. Plato has said that "the beautiful is nothing else than
the visible form of the good." If it is so, the ugly should be the
visible form of the evil, and, by constantly beholding it, the mind
insensibly deteriorates.

But above all, in order to cherish the feelings of kindness and pity,
let me hang at the foot of my bed this