s I tell you the story, I feel my heart beat
faster, and my tongue falter for sympathy.

_He._--Singular beings, you are!

_I._--'Tis you who are beings much to be pitied, if you cannot
imagine that one rises above one's lot, and that it is impossible
to be unhappy under the shelter of good actions.

_He._--That is a kind of felicity with which I should find it hard
to familiarise myself, for we do not often come across it. But,
then, according to you, we should be good.

_I._--To be happy, assuredly.

_He._--Yet I see an infinity of honest people who are not happy,
and an infinity of people who are happy without being honest.

_I._--You think so.

_He._--And is it not for having had common sense and frankness for
a moment, that I don't know where to go for a supper to-night?

_I._--Nay, it is for not having had it always; it is because you
did not perceive in good time that one ought first and foremost to
provide a resource independent of servitude.

_He._--Independent or not, the resource I had provided is at any
rate the most comfortable.

_I._--And the least sure and least decent.

_He._--But the most conformable to my character of sloth, madman,
and good-for-nought.

_I._--Just so.

_He._--And since I can secure my happiness by vices which are
natural to me, which I have acquired without labour, which I
preserve without effort, which go well with the manners of my
nation, which are to the taste of those who protect me, and are
more in harmony with their small private necessities than virtues
which would weary them by being a standing accusation against them
from morning to night, why, it would be very singular for me to go
and torment myself like a lost spirit, for the sake of making
myself into somebody other than I am, to put on a character
foreign to my own, and qualities which I will admit to be highly
estimable, in order to avoid discussion, but which it would cost me
a great deal to acquire, and a great deal to practise, and would
lead to nothing, or possibly to worse than nothing, through the
continual satire of the rich among whom beggars like me have to
seek their subsistence. We praise virtue, but we hate it, and shun
it, and know very well that it freezes the marrow of our bones--and
in this