tion. I shall never dispute a
right so natural and salutary, seeing that without this distinction, this
superiority, which makes of the well-born and the well-bred a race apart,
the rest of the world would have no standard by which to rule their
lives, no anchor to throw into the depths of that vast sea of fortune and
of misfortune on which we others drive before the wind. It is because of
this, dear Madame, that I regard myself so doubly fortunate to have been
able for a few minutes in this bitter pilgrimage called life, to sit
beneath the tree of safety. To have been able, if only for an hour, to
sit and set the pilgrims pass, the pilgrims with the blistered feet and
ragged clothes, and who yet, dear Madame, guard within their hearts a
certain joy in life, illegal joy, like the desert air which travellers
will tell you fills men as with wine to be able thus to sit an hour, and
with a smile to watch them pass, lame and blind, in all the rags of their
deserved misfortunes, can you not conceive, dear Madame, how that must be
for such as I a comfort? Whatever one may say, it is sweet, from a
position of security, to watch the sufferings of others; it gives one a
good sensation in the heart.

In writing this, I recollect that I myself once had the chance of passing
all my life in this enviable safety, and as you may suppose, dear Madame,
I curse myself that I should ever have had the courage to step beyond the
boundaries of this fine tranquil state. Yet, too, there have been times
when I have asked myself: "Do we really differ from the wealthy--we
others, birds of the fields, who have our own philosophy, grown from the
pains of needing bread--we who see that the human heart is not always an
affair of figures, or of those good maxims that one finds in
copy-books--do we really differ?" It is with shame that I confess to
have asked myself a question so heretical. But now, when for these four
weeks I have had the fortune of this rest beneath your roof, I see how
wrong I was to entertain such doubts. It is a great happiness to have
decided once for all this point, for it is not in my character to pass
through life uncertain--mistaken, perhaps--on psychological matters such
as these. No, Madame; rest happily assured that there is a great
difference, which in the future will be sacred for me. For, believe me,
Madame, it would be calamity for high Society if by chance there should
arise amongst them any understanding of al