on. At last,
quite out of patience, I sat up and hurled my nightcap to the foot of the
bed!

(I will observe, by way of parenthesis, that the various evolutions of
this pacific headgear seem to have been, from the remotest time, symbols
of the vehement emotions of the mind; for our language has borrowed its
most common images from them.)

But be this as it may, I got up in a very bad humor, grumbling at my new
neighbor, who took it into his head to be wakeful when I wished to sleep.
We are all made thus; we do not understand that others may live on their
own account. Each one of us is like the earth, according to the old
system of Ptolemy, and thinks he can have the whole universe revolve
around himself. On this point, to make use of the metaphor alluded to:
'Tous les hommes ont la tete dans le meme bonnet'.

I had for the time being, as I have already said, thrown mine to the
other end of my bed; and I slowly disengaged my legs from the warm
bedclothes, while making a host of evil reflections upon the
inconvenience of having neighbors.

For more than a month I had not had to complain of those whom chance had
given me; most of them only came in to sleep, and went away again on
rising. I was almost always alone on this top story--alone with the
clouds and the sparrows!

But at Paris nothing lasts; the current of life carries us along, like
the seaweed torn from the rock; the houses are vessels which take mere
passengers. How many different faces have I already seen pass along the
landing-place belonging to our attics! How many companions of a few days
have disappeared forever! Some are lost in that medley of the living
which whirls continually under the scourge of necessity, and others in
that resting-place of the dead, who sleep under the hand of God!

Peter the bookbinder is one of these last. Wrapped up in selfishness, he
lived alone and friendless, and he died as he had lived. His loss was
neither mourned by any one, nor disarranged anything in the world; there
was merely a ditch filled up in the graveyard, and an attic emptied in
our house.

It is the same which my new neighbor has inhabited for the last few days.

To say truly (now that I am quite awake, and my ill humor is gone with my
nightcap)--to say truly, this new neighbor, although rising earlier than
suits my idleness, is not the less a very good man: he carries his
misfortunes, as few know how to carry their good fortunes, with
cheerfulness and m