then understood that the money they had meant for the journey had just
been given to the beggar! Good, like evil, is contagious: I run to the
poor wounded girl, give her the sum that was to pay for my own place,
and return to Frances and Madeleine, and tell them I will walk with
them.

..........................

I am just come back from taking them home; and have left them delighted
with their day, the recollection of which will long make them happy.
This morning I was pitying those whose lives are obscure and joyless;
now, I understand that God has provided a compensation with every trial.
The smallest pleasure derives from rarity a relish otherwise unknown.
Enjoyment is only what we feel to be such, and the luxurious man feels
no longer: satiety has destroyed his appetite, while privation preserves
to the other that first of earthly blessings: the being easily made
happy. Oh, that I could persuade every one of this! that so the rich
might not abuse their riches, and that the poor might have patience. If
happiness is the rarest of blessings, it is because the reception of it
is the rarest of virtues.

Madeleine and Frances! ye poor old maids whose courage, resignation,
and generous hearts are your only wealth, pray for the wretched who give
themselves up to despair; for the unhappy who hate and envy; and for the
unfeeling into whose enjoyments no pity enters.

BOOK 2.

CHAPTER VI. UNCLE MAURICE

June 7th, Four O'clock A.M.

I am not surprised at hearing, when I awake, the birds singing so
joyfully outside my window; it is only by living, as they and I do, in
a top story, that one comes to know how cheerful the mornings really are
up among the roofs. It is there that the sun sends his first rays, and
the breeze comes with the fragrance of the gardens and woods; there that
a wandering butterfly sometimes ventures among the flowers of the attic,
and that the songs of the industrious work-woman welcome the dawn of
day. The lower stories are still deep in sleep, silence, and shadow,
while here labor, light, and song already reign.

What life is around me! See the swallow returning from her search for
food, with her beak full of insects for her young ones; the sparrows
shake the dew from their wings while they chase one another in the
sunshine; and my neighbors throw open their windows, and welcome
the morning with their fresh faces! Delightful hour of waking, when
everything returns to feeli