rees, your sunsets and sunrises,
your blue skies and your self-satisfied faces--when all this wealth
of beauty and happiness begins with the fact that it accounts me--only
me--one too many! What is the good of all this beauty and glory to me,
when every second, every moment, I cannot but be aware that this little
fly which buzzes around my head in the sun's rays--even this little fly
is a sharer and participator in all the glory of the universe, and knows
its place and is happy in it;--while I--only I, am an outcast, and have
been blind to the fact hitherto, thanks to my simplicity! Oh! I know
well how the prince and others would like me, instead of indulging in
all these wicked words of my own, to sing, to the glory and triumph of
morality, that well-known verse of Gilbert's:

"'O, puissent voir longtemps votre beaute sacree Tant d'amis, sourds a
mes adieux! Qu'ils meurent pleins de jours, que leur mort soit pleuree,
Qu'un ami leur ferme les yeux!'

"But believe me, believe me, my simple-hearted friends, that in this
highly moral verse, in this academical blessing to the world in general
in the French language, is hidden the intensest gall and bitterness;
but so well concealed is the venom, that I dare say the poet actually
persuaded himself that his words were full of the tears of pardon and
peace, instead of the bitterness of disappointment and malice, and so
died in the delusion.

"Do you know there is a limit of ignominy, beyond which man's
consciousness of shame cannot go, and after which begins satisfaction in
shame? Well, of course humility is a great force in that sense, I admit
that--though not in the sense in which religion accounts humility to be
strength!

"Religion!--I admit eternal life--and perhaps I always did admit it.

"Admitted that consciousness is called into existence by the will of a
Higher Power; admitted that this consciousness looks out upon the world
and says 'I am;' and admitted that the Higher Power wills that the
consciousness so called into existence, be suddenly extinguished (for
so--for some unexplained reason--it is and must be)--still there comes
the eternal question--why must I be humble through all this? Is it not
enough that I am devoured, without my being expected to bless the
power that devours me? Surely--surely I need not suppose that
Somebody--there--will be offended because I do not wish to live out the
fortnight allowed me? I don't believe it.

"It is much simpler, an