is finger
towards heaven, cried:--)

The stars, the stars! When nature made Leo, Vinci, Pergolese, Duni,
she wore a smile; her face was solemn and commanding when she created
my dear uncle Rameau, who for ten years has been called the great
Rameau, and who will soon be named no more. But when she scraped his
nephew together, she made a face and a face and a face.--(And as he
spoke he made grimaces, one of contempt, one of irony, one of scorn.
He went through the motions of kneading dough, and smiled at the
ludicrous forms he gave it. Then he threw the strange pagoda from
him.) So she made me and threw me down among other pagodas, some with
portly well-filled paunches, short necks, protruding goggle eyes, and
an apoplectic appearance; others with lank and crooked necks and
emaciated forms, with animated eyes and hawks' noses. These all felt
like laughing themselves to death when they saw me, and when I saw
them I set my arms akimbo and felt like laughing myself to death, for
fools and clowns take pleasure in one another; seek one another out,
attract one another. Had I not found upon my arrival in this world the
proverb ready-made, that the money of fools is the inheritance of the
clever, the world would have owed it to me. I felt that nature had put
my inheritance into the purse of the pagodas, and I tried in a
thousand ways to recover it.

_I_--I know these ways. You have told me of them. I have admired them.
But with so many capabilities, why do you not try to accomplish
something great?

_He_--That is exactly what a man of the world said to the Abbe Le
Blanc. The abbe replied:--"The Marquise de Pompadour takes me in hand
and brings me to the door of the Academy; then she withdraws her hand;
I fall and break both legs."--"You ought to pull yourself together,"
rejoined the man of the world, "and break the door in with your
head."--"I have just tried that," answered the abbe, "and do you know
what I got for it? A bump on the head." ... (Then he drank a swallow
from what remained in the bottle and turned to his neighbor.) Sir, I
beg you for a pinch of snuff. That's a fine snuff-box you have there.
You are a musician? No! All the better for you. They are a lot of poor
deplorable wretches. Fate made me one of them, me! Meanwhile at
Montmartre there is a mill, and in the mill there is perhaps a miller
or a miller's lad, who will never hear anything but the roaring of the
mill, and who might have composed the most beauti