ittle
curiously without taking offence, but who keep their real thoughts to
themselves. It was necessary to learn, as the result of painful and
humiliating experiment, that you are not at liberty to obey all nature's
laws without distinction in the dwelling of the gods; to recognize that
the kitchen is the privileged and most agreeable spot in that divine
dwelling, although you are hardly allowed to abide in it because of the
cook, who is a considerable, but jealous power; to learn that doors are
important and capricious volitions, which sometimes lead to felicity,
but which most often, hermetically closed, mute and stern, haughty and
heartless, remain deaf to all entreaties; to admit, once and for all,
that the essential good things of life, the indisputable blessings,
generally imprisoned in pots and stewpans, are almost always
inaccessible; to know how to look at them with laboriously-acquired
indifference and to practise to take no notice of them, saying to
yourself that here are objects which are probably sacred, since merely
to skim them with the tip of a respectful tongue is enough to let loose
the unanimous anger of all the gods of the house.

[Illustration]

And then, what is one to think of the table on which so many things
happen that cannot be guessed; of the derisive chairs on which one is
forbidden to sleep; of the plates and dishes that are empty by the
time that one can get at them; of the lamp that drives away the dark?...
How many orders, dangers, prohibitions, problems, enigmas has one not to
classify in one's overburdened memory!... And how to reconcile all this
with other laws, other enigmas, wider and more imperious, which one
bears within one's self, within one's instinct, which spring up and
develop from one hour to the other, which come from the depths of time
and the race, invade the blood, the muscles and the nerves and suddenly
assert themselves more irresistibly and more powerfully than pain, the
word of the master himself, or the fear of death?

Thus, for instance, to quote only one example, when the hour of sleep
has struck for men, you have retired to your hole, surrounded by the
darkness, the silence and the formidable solitude of the night. All is
sleep in the master's house. You feel yourself very small and weak in
the presence of the mystery. You know that the gloom is peopled with
foes who hover and lie in wait. You suspect the trees, the passing wind
and the moonbeams. You would