u are naturally relieved if an apoplectic fit empties
his chair, and sets you free to say, "_Point de sauce blanche!_" All men
are egotists, they only persuade themselves they are not selfish by
swearing so often, that at last they believe what they say. No motive
under the sun will stand the microscope; human nature, like a faded
beauty, must only have a _demi-lumier_; draw the blinds up, and the
blotches come out, the wrinkles show, and the paint peels off. The
beauty scolds the servants--men hiss the satirists--who dare to let in
daylight!

* * *

The Frenchwoman prides herself on being thought unfaithful to her
husband; the Englishwoman on being thought faithful to him; but though
their theories are different, their practice comes to much the same
thing.

_FRIENDSHIP._

When Zeus, half in sport and half in cruelty, made man, young Hermes,
who, as all Olympus knew, was for ever at some piece of mischief,
insisted on meddling with his father's work, and got leave to fashion
the human ear out of a shell that he chanced to have by him, across
which he stretched a fine cobweb that he stole from Arachne. But he
hollowed and twisted the shell in such a fashion that it would turn back
all sounds except very loud blasts that Falsehood should blow on a
brazen horn, whilst the impenetrable web would keep out all such
whispers as Truth could send up from the depths of her well.

Hermes chuckled as he rounded the curves of his ear, and fastened it on
to the newly-made human creature.

"So shall these mortals always hear and believe the thing that is not,"
he said to himself in glee--knowing that the box he would give to
Pandora would not bear more confused and complex woes to the hapless
earth than this gift of an ear to man.

But he forgot himself so far that, though two ears were wanted, he only
made one.

Apollo, passing that way, marked the blunder, and resolved to avenge the
theft of his milk-white herds which had led him such a weary chase
through Tempe.

Apollo took a pearl of the sea and hollowed it, and strung across it a
silver string from his own lyre, and with it gave to man one ear by
which the voice of Truth should reach the brain.

"You have spoilt all my sport," said the boy Hermes, angry and weeping.

"Nay," said the elder brother with a smile. "Be comforted. The brazen
trumpets will be sure to drown the whisper from the well, and ten
thousand mortals to one, be sure, wi