a sensualist. The
greatest of stoics was Philoxenus, who wished to possess the neck of a
crane, so as to be longer in tasting the pleasures of the table.
Receipts to-day, naught. Nothing sold all day. Inhabitants, servants,
and tradesmen, here is the doctor, here are the drugs. You are losing
your time, old friend. Pack up your physic. Every one is well down here.
It's a cursed town, where every one is well! The skies alone have
diarrhoea--what snow! Anaxagoras taught that the snow was black; and he
was right, cold being blackness. Ice is night. What a hurricane! I can
fancy the delight of those at sea. The hurricane is the passage of
demons. It is the row of the tempest fiends galloping and rolling head
over heels above our bone-boxes. In the cloud this one has a tail, that
one has horns, another a flame for a tongue, another claws to its wings,
another a lord chancellor's paunch, another an academician's pate. You
may observe a form in every sound. To every fresh wind a fresh demon.
The ear hears, the eye sees, the crash is a face. Zounds! There are
folks at sea--that is certain. My friends, get through the storm as best
you can. I have enough to do to get through life. Come now, do I keep an
inn, or do I not? Why should I trade with these travellers? The
universal distress sends its spatterings even as far as my poverty. Into
my cabin fall hideous drops of the far-spreading mud of mankind. I am
given up to the voracity of travellers. I am a prey--the prey of those
dying of hunger. Winter, night, a pasteboard hut, an unfortunate friend
below and without, the storm, a potato, a fire as big as my fist,
parasites, the wind penetrating through every cranny, not a halfpenny,
and bundles which set to howling. I open them and find beggars inside.
Is this fair? Besides, the laws are violated. Ah! vagabond with your
vagabond child! Mischievous pick-pocket, evil-minded abortion, so you
walk the streets after curfew? If our good king only knew it, would he
not have you thrown into the bottom of a ditch, just to teach you
better? My gentleman walks out at night with my lady, and with the glass
at fifteen degrees of frost, bare-headed and bare-footed. Understand
that such things are forbidden. There are rules and regulations, you
lawless wretches. Vagabonds are punished, honest folks who have houses
are guarded and protected. Kings are the fathers of their people. I have
my own house. You would have been whipped in the public stree