oyed
by scepticism, artificial living, over-abuse; it is fostered by
confidence, moderation and normal habits of thought and action.

An excellent proof of my proposition, and one very easily encountered,
lies in the fact that wherever life is simple and sane, true pleasure
accompanies it as fragrance does uncultivated flowers. Be this life
hard, hampered, devoid of all things ordinarily considered as the very
conditions of pleasure, the rare and delicate plant, joy, flourishes
there. It springs up between the flags of the pavement, on an arid wall,
in the fissure of a rock. We ask ourselves how it comes, and whence: but
it lives; while in the soft warmth of conservatories or in fields richly
fertilized you cultivate it at a golden cost to see it fade and die in
your hand.

Ask actors what audience is happiest at the play; they will tell you the
popular one. The reason is not hard to grasp. To these people the play
is an exception, they are not bored by it from over-indulgence. And,
too, to them it is a rest from rude toil. The pleasure they enjoy they
have honestly earned, and they know its cost as they know that of each
sou earned by the sweat of their labor. More, they have not frequented
the wings, they have no intrigues with the actresses, they do not see
the wires pulled. To them it is all real. And so they feel pleasure
unalloyed. I think I see the sated sceptic, whose monocle glistens in
that box, cast a disdainful glance over the smiling crowd.

"Poor stupid creatures, ignorant and gross!"

And yet they are the true livers, while he is an artificial product, a
mannikin, incapable of experiencing this fine and salutary intoxication
of an hour of frank pleasure.

Unhappily, ingenuousness is disappearing, even in the rural districts.
We see the people of our cities, and those of the country in their turn,
breaking with the good traditions. The mind, warped by alcohol, by the
passion for gambling, and by unhealthy literature, contracts little by
little perverted tastes. Artificial life makes irruption into
communities once simple in their pleasures, and it is like phylloxera to
the vine. The robust tree of rustic joy finds its sap drained, its
leaves turning yellow.

Compare a _fete champetre_ of the good old style with the village
festivals, so-called, of to-day. In the one case, in the honored setting
of antique costumes, genuine countrymen sing the folk songs, dance
rustic dances, regale themselves with n