nd more unconquerable. Every thought that quickens my heart
brings quickening, too, to the love and respect that I have for
mankind. As I rise aloft, you rise with me. But if, the better to love
you, I deem it my duty to tear off the wings from my love, your love
being wingless as yet; then shall I have added in vain to the plaints
and the tears in the valley, but brought my own love thereby not one
whit nearer the mountain. Our love should always be lodged on the
highest peak we can attain. Let our love not spring from pity when it
can be born of love; let us not forgive for charity's sake when justice
offers forgiveness; nor let us try to console there where we can
respect. Let our one never-ceasing care be to better the love that we
offer our fellows. One cup of this love that is drawn from the spring
on the mountain is worth a hundred taken from the stagnant well of
ordinary charity. And if there be one whom you no longer can love
because of the pity you feel, or the tears that he sheds; and if he
ignore to the end that you love him because you ennobled him at the
same time you ennobled yourself, it matters but little after all; for
you have done what you held to be best, and the best is not always most
useful. Should we not invariably act in this life as though the God
whom our heart desires with its highest desire were watching our every
action?

72. In a terrible catastrophe that took place but a short time
ago,[Footnote: The fire at the Bazar de la Charite in Paris.] destiny
afforded yet another, and perhaps the most startling instance of what
it pleases men to term her injustice, her blindness, or her
irresponsibility. She seemed to have singled out for especial
chastisement the solitary external virtue that reason has left us--our
love for our fellow-man. There must have been some moderately righteous
men amongst the victims, and it seems almost certain that there was at
least one whose virtue was wholly disinterested and sincere. It is the
presence of this one truly good man that warrants our asking, in all
its simplicity, the terrible question that rises to our lips. Had he
not been there we might have tried to believe that this act of
seemingly monstrous injustice was in reality composed of particles of
sovereign justice. We might have whispered to ourselves that what they
termed charity, out yonder, was perhaps only the arrogant flower of
permanent injustice.

We seem unwilling to recognise the blindness