sider this
picture well. If society were always like this, would you wish to give
it up? If it is not like this, may it not be possible for you to help to
make it so? Is there any better work laid ready to your hand? If so, do
it, by all means. If not, is not this well worth doing?

It is thus that Amiel describes a small evening party: "Thirty people of
the best society, a happy mingling of sexes and ages. Gray heads, young
people, _spirituelle_ faces. All framed in tapestries of Aubusson which
gave a soft distance and a charming background to the groups in full
dress.... In the world it is necessary to have the appearance of living
on ambrosia and of being acquainted with only noble cares. Anxiety,
want, passion do not exist. All realism is suppressed as brutal. In a
word, what is called _le grand monde_ presents for the moment a
flattering illusion, that of being in an ethereal state and of breathing
the life of mythology. That is the reason that all vehemence, every cry
of nature, all true suffering, all careless familiarity, all open marks
of passion, shock and jar in this delicate _milieu_, and destroy in a
moment the whole fabric, the palace of clouds, the magic architecture
raised by the consent of all.

"It is like the harsh cock-crow which causes all enchantment to vanish
and puts the fairies to flight. These choice _reunions_ act
unconsciously towards a concert of eye and ear, towards an improvised
work of art. This instinctive accord is a festival for the mind and
taste, and transports the actors into the sphere of the imagination. It
is a form of poetry, and it is thus that cultivated society renews by
reflection the idyl which has disappeared....

"Paradoxical or not, I believe that these fleeting attempts to
reconstruct a dream which pursues beauty alone are confused
recollections of the age of gold which haunts the human soul, or rather
of aspirations towards the harmony of things which daily reality refuses
to us, and to which we are introduced only by art."

XV.

NARROW LIVES.

What is a narrow life? Its causes almost always lie in character. One
either has a narrow nature, or is subject to some tyrant who has a
narrow nature. In such cases there is little hope of remedy.

But in general circumstances are not responsible for a narrow life.
Illness and poverty indeed are hard to resist, nevertheless I hope to
show by actual examples that broad lives are lived by the sick and poor.

O