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Charles Wagner. 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE, 
 
 OR, £ 03 
 
 THE SOUL OF THINGS. 
 
 BY 
 
 EEV. CHARLES WAGNER, 
 
 Author of " The Simple Life," "The Busy Life." Etc., Etc. 
 
 Translated from the French by OLIVE HARPER. 
 
 COPYEIGHT, 1904, BY 
 
 J. S. Ogilvie Publishing Company. 
 
 New York: 
 J. S. OGILVIE PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
 
 57 Rose Street, 
 
LIBRARY Of CONGRESS 
 Two Copies Received 
 
 DfcC 3 1904 
 
 Couyritfiu tfiiry 
 7ltnsA, t90i+ 
 CUSS <v XXC Noi 
 
 /Of /'3 
 COPY 6. 
 
 BD*3I 
 
 THREE BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 THE SIMPLE LIFE. 
 THE VOICE OF NATUEE. 
 THE BUSY LIFE. 
 
 Printed and bound uniform in style and price. Paper 
 cover, 30 cents ; cloth bound, 60 cents. Mailed, postpaid, 
 on receipt of price by the Publishers. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Author's Preface 5 
 
 The Key to the Fields 7 
 
 The Lessons of the Mountain 10 
 
 The Torrent 12 
 
 Too Much Protection 15 
 
 The Old Stock 18 
 
 Vain Hopes — Chimerical Terrors 20 
 
 On the Frontier 24 
 
 The Old Sawyer ; 28 
 
 On the Banks of the Leman 31 
 
 About Old Rags 33 
 
 The Two Cuirassiers 35 
 
 Shelter 38 
 
 How We Make Enemies 41 
 
 Without a Watch 43 
 
 Without a Purse 47 
 
 A Fishing Party 52 
 
 Wheat 55 
 
 I A Pest 59 
 
 Flies 65 
 
 Small People — Great Examples 71 
 
 What Are They Looking At? 73 
 
 On the Death of the Flowers 76 
 
 An Act of Justice 78 
 
 A Cat in the Water 81 
 
 Those to Whom We Listen 84 
 
 Moving 87 
 
 3 
 
4 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 To Better Oneself 89 
 
 What Is Going to Happen? 93 
 
 The Terrace Builder's Breakfast 96 
 
 Habit 99 
 
 Questions of Age 102 
 
 To Serve at the Right Moment 105 
 
 Monsieur Son-in-Law 108 
 
 Well Informed 113 
 
 Impossible Sympathy 116 
 
 To Distrust Oneself 119 
 
 Find the Formula 123 
 
 Infamous Capital 126 
 
 Ready Money 130 
 
 A New Divinity 134 
 
 Street Sweepers 138 
 
 Extra Horses 142 
 
 Morning Bells 145 
 
 Lesson of Labor 148 
 
 The Hand 152 
 
 Discouragement 154 
 
 Labors for the Future 157 
 
 Associated Miseries 160 
 
 The Shoe 162 
 
 Wishes 166 
 
 GoodWill 169 
 
 Pilgrimage 172 
 
 Impressions of All Saints' Day 175 
 
 Paquerette — Easter Daisy 179 
 
AUTHOR'S PREFACE 
 
 The scenes described and interpreted in this book 
 are but the changeable reflection of life, smiling and 
 wretched by turns, noble and vile, ideal, or of the 
 earth, earthy, but always interesting. 
 
 The tiniest crumb of reality, an ant at its labor, a 
 child at play, a leaf falling from the tree, have always 
 strangely captivated me. 
 
 As cold as the most learned deception leaves me, 
 just so much the simple and authentic phenomena 
 charm me. One part of the great drama is played there 
 by actors without paint or bombast. 
 
 The attraction of living things is inexhaustible. 
 Each, by an irresistible movement, becomes a sign, a 
 lesson, a symbol. There is not a slender thread of a 
 rivulet hidden in the valley that, step by step, does not 
 guide toward the summit. All creation speaks to him 
 who knows how to lend his ear. Of this voice- of 
 things, heard so often in whispers or formidable 
 sounds, I have tried to note a few accents. 
 
 Permit me to offer them to you, known and un- 
 known friends, in these pages now gathered together. 
 May they receive from you as kind a welcome as their 
 elders had. 
 
 C. Wagner. 
 
 E 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE 
 
 THE KEY TO THE FIELDS. 
 
 Man acts, but God leads him. One does not do 
 what he wishes to do; and more than one has taken 
 root where he had intended only to pass by. That is my 
 case. Rural by nature, I found myself retained by 
 imperative labor in the heart of a great city, and I 
 shall doubtless die there some day, having guarded, 
 in the bottom of my heart, the lively and loved remem- 
 brance of forests and fields. 
 
 While waiting, I profit by happy chances to escape 
 from my prison at intervals. 
 
 Such was the beginning of an article that I wished 
 to write for some friends, about the tenth of March, 
 at Chene-Bougeries, near Geneva. It was interrupted 
 by other occupations. I continue it now at the end of 
 April, at Montana-sur-Sierre, in Valais, by the bed- 
 side of my son. Ah ! the uncertain path of our lives, 
 what turns it makes ; how it rises or falls unexpectedly ! 
 There is the beginning of the article to which I was to 
 give a following little dreamed of then. 
 
 The key to the fields was offered me, or rather, 
 
 7 
 
g THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 forced upon me, and for longer than I should have de- 
 sired. And now, in this Alpine solitude, where I am, 
 the direction of my thoughts is oftener toward that 
 Paris, from which so little time ago I congratulated 
 myself on sometimes escaping. 
 
 When I say the key to the fields, it must not be 
 taken literally. There are no fields here save those of 
 snow. The plow loves only the plains and lower slopes 
 of the mountains. It does not climb to high altitudes. 
 One does not hear the laborer's whip, nor the song of 
 the sower, but, instead, the torrents which run to the 
 valley and leave deep ravines on the abrupt flank of 
 the mountain. 
 
 But how beautiful is this solitary region of sum- 
 mits ! What a seal of grandeur is set thereon ! And 
 how these giants of the Alps, immovable under the 
 sky, make us think of that which changes not ! Every 
 moment passages from the Old Testament chant a re- 
 frain in my memory. The Book of Prophets and 
 Psalms are full of imagery borrowed from the moun- 
 tains. 
 
 "The Lord is a rock and a high tower." "I will 
 lift mine eyes to the mountains from whence comes my 
 salvation." In seeing them seated on their bases, 
 ranged around that vast horizon, like white and impos- 
 ing majesties, it seems to me that they are the wit- 
 nesses of God — monuments that he placed there to 
 say: "That which I have promised holds good." 
 
 And then, across the massive solidity of these visi- 
 ble things, the invisible appears to me, of which all 
 that the eye beholds is but the symbol. And these 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 9 
 
 words of the Spirit sound in the deepest depths of my 
 soul : "Before the mountains were born, and Thou 
 had created the earth and the world, from everlasting 
 to everlasting Thou art God." 
 
 "The mountains will crumble, the hills shake, but 
 my grace will not shake and my alliance of peace will 
 not fall." 
 
 "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words 
 will not pass away." 
 
 If the mountain is mighty, it is graceful also. 
 
 There is nothing so impressive as these contrasts. 
 On the immensity of the ocean the light, snowy body 
 of a sea-gull is rocked by the wave, or on the gigantic 
 back of the mountain grows the little blue gentian of 
 deepest hue. Oh, this blue! I think, when leaning 
 over this corollary, of Him who said : 
 
 "Consider the lilies of the field; Solomon in all his 
 glory was not arrayed like one of these." And I can- 
 not help thinking how good He was to attach His 
 words of the eternal life to the most fragile things of 
 the earth, and to send the message by a little flower. 
 "Take no heed of to-morrow." In truth the gospel 
 of salvation could not be confided to more gracious 
 messengers. 
 
 And I shall not complain of having walked through 
 unknown and dangerous paths, if, sometimes, in turn- 
 ings where I have felt the most hesitancy, it was given 
 to me to meet this companion, the most desirable of all, 
 whose word reassures, whose look sheds light on all 
 things, and whose words furnish the key to the king- 
 dom of heaven. 
 
IQ THE VOICE OP NATURE. 
 
 THE LESSONS OF THE MOUNTAIN. 
 
 The solitary tourist who travels over the summits 
 of the Vosges, to the Ballon or the Champ-du-feu, 
 crosses immense pasturages sown with a fine and 
 hardy grass. In the midst of these fields, which Na- 
 ture alone fecundates and cares for, the labor of man 
 is seen but from time to time, under the form of a 
 barrier of wood, or some primitive wall of stones super- 
 posed without cement. The eye is so much the more 
 surprised to meet here and there thickets of beech, 
 carefully trimmed, as if some painstaking gardener, 
 who loved symmetry, had passed that way. All these 
 thickets present the form of very regular cones, of 
 every size, and the number is so great that one thinks 
 with wonder of the colossal labor their shaping has 
 cost. 
 
 And yet this labor has not cost one penny. It has 
 not troubled a gardener nor a pair of scissors. It 
 has accomplished itself with as much good will as 
 knowledge. And it is the cows and the sheep and 
 goats who are the authors. The first day of their ar- 
 rival on the mountain, the flocks and herds attack the 
 tender buds and twigs with avidity. They browse 
 conscientiously to the last leaf, and the shearer who 
 clips the wool from their heads does not work with 
 greater precision than these thousands of sharp teeth 
 at the service of the appetites ceaselessly renewed. 
 
 The same work may be seen on the fir trees. I have 
 often observed in the Alps the diverse forms which 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. H 
 
 the trees finally take under the voracious teeth of the 
 herbivorous animals. 
 
 Some die. The drain kills them. Others, where 
 the cows have browsed on the hearts, remain dwarfed. 
 Years pass and they do not grow an inch. They are 
 there crouched down on the ground like a hedgehog 
 in defence. But others, having kept their central 
 growth, throw it up in the air with vigor. The very 
 bites under which fall the young twigs and branches 
 which garnish the base of the tree, multiply these, and 
 at length make them grow to a vegetation rich and 
 hardy, After a number of years, when the tree has 
 raised its living crown toward the heavens, it finds it- 
 self furnished with a sort of spiny muff, which is ab- 
 solutely impenetrable. Impossible to approach it — it 
 defies all attacks. 
 
 Seeing these diverse destinies of the trees, those of 
 men seem to me to be similar. We also bear differ- 
 ently the trials and difficulties of life. They hinder 
 the growth of some, and exterminate others complete- 
 ly. But there are others whom the attacks fortify. They 
 grow by the very struggle. The blows of adversity 
 forge an armor for them. I admire those as I con- 
 sider with interest the robust fir tree which has 
 triumphed in its struggle. 
 
 Still, I do not know what sorrowful tenderness 
 causes me to pause beside those poor little trees, stunted, 
 conquered and mutilated. I say to myself that the 
 same Creator caused them to grow; He made the 
 whole of them, and knows what happens to each, and 
 does not forget one. Their place is marked in His 
 
22 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 plan. Is not also in that thought our consolation in 
 obscure life? 
 
 Those who grow, grow by His strength ; those who 
 fall, fall into His arms. 
 
 THE TORRENT. 
 
 The tides are the faithful symbols of human life. 
 We talk of the course of existence, of its source, of 
 the ocean of eternity ; where all the little rivulets go to 
 throw themselves, images of actual, individual life, and 
 the great floods, images of collective life. 
 
 Like the tides, life has its storms, its tempests and 
 its repose. It is troubled to-day, dull, seeming like 
 torrents yellowed by storm. To-morrow it will be 
 limpid, and the traveler, following its banks will dis- 
 tinguish the sand, and see polished pebbles on its deep 
 bed. 
 
 A stained life resembles those rivers where industry 
 empties its poisons. The surface is discolored with 
 grease and dust. From the floating masses which 
 cover them mount impure exhalations. In a pure life 
 heaven is reflected as in clear water the hill sees its re- 
 flection and the stars look at themselves. 
 
 The gaiety of childhood recalls those alert little 
 water-courses, tumbling adown the ravines, where the 
 wag-tail wets his swift feet. Is there a word, a cry, 
 a color painting human joy better than the infinite 
 
THE VOICE OP NATURE. 13 
 
 smile of the sun on the scintillating wrinkles of a 
 blue sea? And when the waves- slow down, sobbing 
 across the weeds, would one not say one heard voices 
 of those who wept? The tide all around murmurs, 
 sings, complains, growls, thunders. It has its caresses 
 and it has its angers. 
 
 I observe the active man, of useful efforts, of gener- 
 ous courage, he whose life is full of labors and strug- 
 gles. Is he not, in his noble activity, like the tide 
 which turns the mill-wheels and the turbines, brings 
 the ships, and makes fertile the fields and prairies ? 
 
 The idle man is represented by the stagnant water 
 where black reptiles deposit their eggs. 
 
 Like the bottom of the silent waters, the soul of the 
 hypocrite springs surprises upon us. Do not confide 
 in that surface sweetness; it hides traps, abysses. 
 There is no more dangerous water than that which 
 sleeps. 
 
 I am seated on the banks of a torrent swollen by the 
 melting of the snows. What secret charm inclined 
 me to follow it from its origin at the base of the dis- 
 tant glacier? But the more familiar I became with it 
 while making my progress, the more I thought I could 
 observe the destinies of a living being. At first it 
 had trickled on the bare soil recently abandoned by the 
 snow. A multitude of narrow little veins gathered 
 into a great artery, and the course began, moderate at 
 first, then accelerated until it reached an abrupt wall 
 of rock, where it made a sudden jump into the gulf. 
 By winding paths I rejoined my traveling companion — 
 a little dizzy by its fall. It boiled and whirled in a 
 
14 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 sort of enormous basin, from which it soon escaped to 
 cross the pasturages of a vast plateau. There its course 
 became peaceful — it fitted itself to the details of the 
 landscape, idling in tranquil pools, stopping to play 
 with the ranunculus plants. 
 
 Reaching the limit of the forest of firs, it was a 
 descent, always more and more precipitate, down to 
 this rugged gorge where the beauty of the spectacle 
 retained me. Adieu the serene walk along the Alpine 
 prairie S Here it is another world. All the powers seem 
 to be leagued against the course of the water to hinder 
 it from running straight downward in peace. Tree 
 trunks are lying across its bed. Whole blocks of 
 rocks have elected it as domicile. Against them the 
 torrent breaks, foams, dashes in flakes and falls back 
 in cascades, powders in fine spray which minute rain- 
 bows make iridescent at moments. In the distance the 
 combs of the mountains ring with the fracas of the 
 waters. Sometimes one might say they were formi- 
 dable voices, covering a meeting of combating enemies. 
 I listen ; I look, marveling. I compare this proud tor- 
 rent with the gentle idler of the pasturages above. 
 How different and how much more beautiful ! 
 
 In the peaceful course of a happy life man is like 
 a transparent rivulet, allowing itself to glide through 
 a sunny prairie. Let the days of adversity come, the 
 assault of contradictory forces, the necessity of fight- 
 ing, he will regret the hardness of the times. But if 
 there is some latent virtue in him, you will see him 
 reveal himself under aspects until then unknown. His 
 soul, like the raging torrents, hurt against the rocks, 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. ^5 
 
 will grow in the breast of his trials. The hidden 
 energy will awaken. Surrounded, blockaded, torment- 
 ed, his inward force will come to the surface, spring- 
 ing from its prison, bounding at obstacles, and his 
 most courageous actions, his most magnanimous trans- 
 ports, we owe, perhaps, to the difficult paths which he 
 was obliged to pass in spite of himself. 
 
 TOO MUCH PROTECTION. 
 
 Protection is a necessary function. Nature is 
 everywhere provided with organs destined to fill that 
 function. 
 
 The bark protects the tree, the cocoon the larva, the 
 fur the bear, the scale the fish, the skull the brains. 
 A special care is taken of all that is born, germinates, 
 aspires to life or makes its first entrance into that diffi- 
 cult career. To be convinced of that one does not 
 need to be a naturalist. It is enough to have eyes. 
 Look how the flowers and leaves are enveloped on the 
 bourgeons of the trees when the sap begins to swell 
 them in the spring. No packer of jewels or precious 
 objects can equal what has been done for the least 
 growth in the hollows of unknown valleys. It is the 
 infinite in the art of precautions. 
 
 In spite of that precaution has its limits. The nor- 
 mal regulation of all these beings has its risks, strug- 
 gles, a part of their salutary rigor. Neither toil nor 
 dangers are spared them. They grow in full effort and 
 
1(J THE VOICE OP NATURE. 
 
 degenerate in ease. After the protecting cotton the 
 fortifying shower. 
 
 Human education does not know how to always 
 maintain an exact balance between these two elements. 
 When we protect we easily stifle. Our shadow is tute- 
 lary, but it causes that which it covers to perish. We 
 avoid great risks for them, but we hinder them from 
 developing character. 
 
 I consider as one of the saddest things of existence, 
 that tenderness itself, and solicitude, may become a 
 peril. It is so legitimate to love one's children, so 
 natural to wish for them a destiny easier than ours 
 when we have had rude beginnings. And that is why 
 there are fathers, mistreated by life, and become men 
 among sufferings and struggles, that rear sons who 
 are not their equals. Grandparents, in whom all the 
 human energies are found, make of their grandsons 
 impotents and incapables by excess of solicitude. This 
 danger is to be feared, above all, in families greatly 
 tried. Having suffered so many blows of destiny, 
 they enfold the newcomers with an almost unhealthy 
 tenderness, and have no courage to be severe with 
 them. The idea of seeing them suffer becomes insup- 
 portable to them, and, according to a picturesque but 
 commonly used locution, they rot. 
 
 By hazard, during a walk in the forest the other day, 
 I came across a symbol so expressive of this style of 
 education, that I desire to present it to the attention of 
 my readers. 
 
 In the middle of a field of ferns rose the trunk of a 
 fir tree, sawn about as high as a man. The natives of 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. jj 
 
 this country of Valais have much consideration for 
 their backbones. Always when they cut a tree they do 
 it at a fair height — not to bend their backs too much. 
 The trunk therefore which occupies our mind just now 
 stood there like a large pedestal of an antique column. 
 Mossy, the bark well preserved, but the wood absolutely 
 decomposed, it was invaded by a multitude of lichens 
 and small weeds, and on its top had rooted two pretty 
 little fir trees, six or eight years old. Brought hither 
 by the wind, two winged seeds, escaped from a cone, 
 had found a propitious dwelling-place. From the 
 heart of this trunk, maybe hundreds of years old, they 
 had sprung and prospered, in plain view, better than 
 their young comrades around them. Impossible to 
 have a situation more favorable., Neither teeth of 
 goats, nor the sickle of the women, cutting indifferently 
 the grass of the woods and the tender twigs ; neither 
 the tusks of the wild boar, nor the iron-shod feet of 
 the hunter could do them injury. 
 
 In truth, that was just like two spoiled children, 
 and I was ready to find their fate worthy of envy, when 
 I began to think of their future. For the moment all 
 goes well, I said, but after? What will they do when 
 they are fifteen or twenty years old? Circumscribed 
 as though in a closet by the trunk of the ancestor who 
 protects, and imprisons them, they cannot spread out 
 their roots. Their tutor will hinder them from reach- 
 ing to the earth. They will grow stunted, and one 
 fine day, when the old trunk, drained dry to the mar- 
 row — having nourished them with its substance — will 
 fall finally into crumbs, its nurslings will bend to 
 
13 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 earth — poor, uprooted things — playthings of the wind, 
 and their miserable end will excite the pity of the 
 passer-by. 
 
 THE OLD STOCK. 
 
 They say "All roads lead to Rome." But are there 
 not roads that lead nowhere? When you have taken 
 them they seem to lead east. And, while following 
 them, you have deviated toward the north, and later, 
 taken the direction of the setting sun. They were 
 large roads, almost wide enough for carriages. They 
 ended in narrow paths, which, insensibly, were effaced 
 beneath your feet, leading nowhere. Such is the moun- 
 tain road which I have just lost. And I congratulate 
 myself for it. For it left me, at the proper moment, 
 like an intelligent guide delivers you to yourself in 
 front of a spectacle, which claims all your attention, 
 and which the indiscreet chattering of your cicerone 
 would spoil. 
 
 It left me, my road, and I had wandered a moment 
 before I had perceived it. So long as it was there 
 beneath my feet I was subject to all its inflections, like 
 the docile water that writhes and twists at the will of a 
 capricious bed. Now I see I am lost; I search the 
 savage gorge, in which I have just fallen, with my 
 eyes. 
 
 What a world, what beautiful chaos ! There, above, 
 enormous rocks emerge to the sunshine. Lower, near 
 to me, the powerful forest clings to the abrupt descent 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. ^9 
 
 sown with blocks of all forms and sizes. With their 
 roots uncovered, the fir trees clasp these fragments. 
 One asks oneself whether the trees sustain the rocks, 
 or if the rocks hold the fir trees. And the whole, at 
 times, seems about to> crumble toward the yawning 
 crevice, from where mounts the voice of the torrent. 
 
 Few human beings have left their trace here. The 
 woodsman who uses his axe everywhere respects this 
 solitude. Why should he cut the wood ? No one could 
 carry it. Time alone, or the tempests, are woodsmen 
 here. Giant trunks rot beneath the moss, and in a 
 pell-mell recall in their disorderly fall the days of the 
 cyclone. 
 
 Elsewhere forest ancestors still stand, dead and erect. 
 Their wormy bark hangs in strings. On the dry 
 branches long gray beards hang and tremble. One 
 might call them skeletons dragging their lugubriously 
 discolored tatters. 
 
 But, very soon, in all this picture, one point attracts 
 my eyes and retains them, fascinated. One old stump, 
 a vestige, doubtless, of some colossus struck by light- 
 ning, spread out to the sunlight, in a clearing, the vast 
 system of its decorticated roots. She launched them 
 far, like tentacles; buried them in the soil, like the 
 claws of a vulture. For how long has this discrowned 
 ruin occupied this place ? Her state of decrepitude on 
 this subject allows free imagination. But, no matter. 
 She has found her employ, and the most graceful pos- 
 sible. In the angles formed by her massive roots, a 
 colony of strawberry vines grow luxuriantly. A few 
 vines have climbed to her head, and courageously im- 
 
20 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 planted themselves in the softened wood transformed 
 into a rich soil. 
 
 Among the white corollaries of flowers and the 
 toothed leaves fine red berries show like laughing chil- 
 dren. And the old stump, made young again by this 
 gay vegetation, enlaces it tenderly with her skinny, 
 grandmotherly arms. Before, when she bore a flour- 
 ishing tree, nothing grew around her. All that was 
 born died stifled. The tree has fallen, leaving . in its 
 stead a vacant place filled with light and air. And now 
 what is left becomes the center of an intense life. Hun- 
 dreds of vegetables germinate there, sheltered from the 
 wind and protected from the feet of travelers. Open 
 table is offered there to the birds of the forest. 
 
 Good old stump, the more I look at you the more 
 you seem animated with a sweet soul. You are the 
 image of noble lives, broken and bruised, detached 
 from all personal happiness, consecrated from now on 
 to that of others. In this unknown corner, full of 
 majestic beauty, nothing draws my attention more than 
 you. 
 
 The fascination of moral beauty in us must be very 
 powerful. To efface all other impressions, an old 
 stump of dead wood sufficed where our soul believed it 
 had found blossoming a symbol of goodness. 
 
 VAIN HOPES— CHIMERICAL TERRORS. 
 
 The strawberries must be ripe in the big clearing in 
 the larch woods. It is a month now since we have seen 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 21 
 
 their first flowers. The other day, in passing there, we 
 saw fruit as large as lentils, and some were already 
 turning red. By this weather, mingled of gentle rains 
 and the warm regards of the sun, the bays fill up and 
 color in the hollows of the mountains like cakes in the 
 oven. Come on, children ! Get your willow baskets, 
 rmd fill them with lunch. The woodland air makes us 
 hungry. When the baskets are empty you will lay 
 fresh grass in the bottoms, and fill them to the brim 
 with those delicious wild strawberries, with their 
 matchless perfume. Your sick brother shall have his 
 part, which will give him pleasure. 
 
 And now we are off, and tongues are untied. 
 
 "Do you think, papa, that these baskets are large 
 enough? To gather that mass of berries, we should 
 have big baskets or boxes. Shall we go back to get 
 them?" 
 
 "Oh, no ; you can make baskets of rushes. We will 
 give everybody strawberries: to our neighbor who is 
 confined to his room ; to the good old woman who walks 
 with crutches. We will make marmalade, tarts, and 
 preserves." 
 
 "Bah ! Perhaps they are not ripe yet, or the birds 
 have eaten them. Is it not so, papa, that birds love 
 strawberries, and carry them to their little ones?" 
 
 "And, who knows, perhaps someone has been there 
 ahead of us. That might happen; the passers, the 
 woodsmen and their children. They know the forest 
 well." 
 
 "Here is the big pond. We are half way. One more 
 little climb, then a descent, and we will be there. The 
 
22 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 place is on the hillside, and I could find it alone, I 
 could." 
 
 "And you, Jean — where is your basket?" 
 
 "I have none. I will lunch with everybody. And 
 if I find any berries I will eat them at once." 
 
 "But who is that woman coming from that path 
 there? One would say that she came from the place 
 where we are going. She carries a basket in her hands. 
 There is red on the top. They are our strawberries. 
 Misery! She has gathered them all. Poor sick 
 brother, who was already enjoying them in anticipa- 
 tion !" 
 
 "Don't talk that way. That woman, without doubt, 
 needs to earn her living. She gathers strawberries to 
 sell. With that money she will buy bread." 
 
 "But that is vexing. I shall go no further. Do you 
 think it is amusing to go so far uselessly?" 
 
 "What if we looked a little closer at her basket ! Let 
 us see if her berries are good." 
 
 "Her berries ! She has none, the poor woman. It is 
 only a red cloth which covers her basket. Under it is 
 white. There are eggs. I breathe again. Quick, 
 come on !" 
 
 "Here we are near the aspen tree with the top cut 
 down. We must turn to the left here. But, what is 
 it that we hear? Children's voices?" 
 
 "Is the place already taken? There will remain 
 nothing for us. They will laugh at us. What a 
 nuisance !" 
 
 "They are the children of the village, and here they 
 come. They hold a handkerchief swollen with some- 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 23 
 
 thing which they hold in it by the four corners — straw- 
 berries without doubt." 
 
 "Fie! it is awfully unclean to put strawberries in 
 handkerchiefs. I wouldn't eat them." 
 
 "Good-day, my young folks. What have you got 
 there?" 
 
 "Bran, sir, and soaked bread, to give to the geese 
 on the pond. It is funny to see them quarrel over this 
 food. They never get enough." 
 
 "Good, we are trapped again ! All these people have 
 planned to lead us into error, and to make us languish 
 and grow angry. What do you think, papa?" 
 
 "That you are all a little crazy. These good people 
 go their ways without thinking of your strawberries 
 or you. You attribute ideas to them that they have not 
 got. It is unjust to them; and as to you, it troubles 
 your mind." 
 
 "Here we are, arrived at the famous place. We find 
 traces of footsteps. Others have been here for berries 
 before us. It is natural and is their right. There are 
 not enough left to fill jars, but there are many, and fine 
 ones. Brother will not be deprived, nor you, either. 
 You will all be tired of gathering them before you get 
 them all. And, see, you will not have what you fool- 
 ishly expected, nor that which you as foolishly feared. 
 Your minds are excessive; and you will find in this 
 the just measure, the reasonable measure. It is no dif- 
 ferent in life. Remember this later when it regards 
 things more serious than strawberries." 
 
 Rarely is all we wish for given us. Rarely happens 
 to us all that we feared. How much easier existence 
 
24 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 would be, if we knew how to moderate our desires bet- 
 ter, and command our fears more! But each one 
 leaves them full liberty, and from infancy accustoms 
 himself to be the slave of his imagination. 
 
 ON THE FRONTIER. 
 
 The Donon is a ridge in the Vosges, situated above 
 the Ban de la Roche, and passes, ever since 1870, as 
 the frontier of France and Germany. I do not think 
 that there exists anywhere in our Western Europe a 
 more beautiful forest than that above. From the great 
 mass of Donon innumerable valleys, densely wooded, 
 branch out in every direction, and particularly toward 
 the west. There are vast undulations where the eye 
 could endlessly wander, and where the wind causes the 
 leaves to shiver and plows hollows like the enormous 
 waves in a verdant ocean. And when the tourist in 
 descending the austere mountain plunges into the 
 depths of the old forests, he finds among the firs, with 
 their long, gray beards, and the beeches, with their light 
 and gay foliage, an immense and inviolate silence. 
 
 Nothing troubles these silent passages, save from 
 time to time the flight of a frightened kid, or a deer, or 
 the formidable flight of a grouse — that king of game 
 birds, whose wings beat the air until it resounds like 
 the throb of a drum. 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 25 
 
 It is there, in the dreamy peace of the heights, the 
 child of Alsace feels overcome by I know not what 
 sadness, of which the old moss-covered rocks are the 
 mute confidants. This implacable line of the frontier 
 evokes in us, in the midst of the calm of nature, sou- 
 venirs of the war, of combats; and after, of conflicts 
 with the people — those furious fights covered with hu- 
 man cries and noise of arms. More than one, in pass- 
 ing here, must have thought the place haunted by the 
 demons of war. 
 
 In my turn I followed the forest path, delivered over 
 to strange and somber suggestions. But it was in 
 summer, afternoon, and on a beautiful but warm day. 
 My footsteps slowed, and while warlike visions surged 
 up around me and possessed my mind, there began 
 around me an active opposition. The soft grass ca- 
 ressed my hands; the little wild flowers, like so many 
 childhood's friends, made signs, called me softly, and 
 I finished by ceding to the temptation to repose myself, 
 after a long absence, on the bosom of my native soil. 
 
 Have you ever lain down on the ground, with your 
 forehead lifted to the blue sky? Have you seen the 
 sky, on a beautiful August night, through the frail 
 reeds or the tops of barley balancing above your head? 
 It is, I assure you, a fashion of looking at the universe 
 that is by no means banal, and which inspires salutary 
 reflections. 
 
 As to me, I floated between two worlds. 
 
 The back against that fatal line of demarkation and 
 of contest, marked at regular distances by stones, to 
 accentuate still more clearly the boundary, I had the 
 
26 THE VOICE OP NATURE. 
 
 impression of being by the side of an eternally impas- 
 sable abyss. I felt in my very marrow the cold steel 
 which had opened this gulf between two peoples, made 
 to understand and complete each other. 
 
 And yet, I know not what beneficent influence, what 
 breath of peacefulness fell upon me from the immensity, 
 through the branches of the oaks and the lace of the 
 ferns. 
 
 At this moment I saw a little titmouse, with her black 
 head, her beak filled with booty. She was there, 
 French side, causing a light twig of a fir tree to bend 
 its delicate extremity with the weight of her tiny body. 
 But scarcely had I had time to note her than she flew 
 away, on the German side, where she doubtless had 
 her nest. 
 
 A bird crossing the frontier — what of that? Noth- 
 ing, surely. But why, then, did this careless flight of 
 the bird over the terrible line move in me depths until 
 now unknown? I was trying to solve this question 
 when I discovered, in the grass close to me, a series of 
 busy ants, which came and went with all sorts of pro- 
 visions for their families, and crossed this threshold 
 of territories without other formality. In the lumin- 
 ous atmosphere were crossed those black streaks left 
 behind by the flights of bees. Were these streaks the 
 scratched out mistakes of diplomats? Higher, driven 
 by a westerly breeze, light clouds coming from France 
 floated over to Germany. 
 
 Burning zone of the frontier, where the spark is al- 
 ways ready to flash between two vast corps charged 
 with opposing electrical forces, I saw you then crossed 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 27 
 
 by many travelers whom you knew not of and whom 
 you did not arrest. I saw you crossed by the road of 
 the ants, the road of the birds, the road of clouds, with- 
 out counting that which at this hour my eyes could not 
 distinguish — that of the stars. And if I could have 
 followed the hidden work of the vegetation under the 
 dark soil, I should have seen, under this same fron- 
 tier, the trees fraternize by their roots. 
 
 These facts, as so many symbols, show me that cer- 
 tain heights and depths escape the lines which limit the 
 surface. There is, in the high regions of intelligence 
 and faith, and in the multiple involutions of the en- 
 trails, a power before which barriers established be- 
 tween peoples no longer count. Does all that hinder 
 the frontier from existence ? No. It is there, with all 
 the painful souvenirs and the duties that it recalls. 
 He is no man who can pass it without suffering and 
 regret; without thinking of the country with a heart 
 more moved, a firmer will to sacrifice himself for its 
 defence. But frontiers are not absolute. Betore be- 
 ing enemies those whom it separates are men. 
 
 In spite of the tragic seriousness of those cease- 
 lessly disputed barriers, there exist higher than they 
 and lower indestructible attachments. We must never 
 cease to believe in that which unites us, even in face 
 of the gravest dissensions and the worst injustice. 
 Without doubt, it was to force me to remember that 
 eternal truth, that the flight of a bird produced such 
 an impression on me. 
 
 And beneath the dome of the forest, where the set- 
 ting sun lighted a thousand fires on the moss, the 
 
28 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 barks, the wings of the gnats and the beetles, I con- 
 tinued my road, thinking of the kingdom of peace 
 where there will be but one flock and only one shep- 
 herd. 
 
 THE OLD SAWYER. 
 
 The valleys are already filled with shadow. On all 
 sides sound the bells on the goats, returning heavy 
 with milk from distant pastures. The peasants await 
 them on their thresholds. Soon the milk will foam in 
 the pails, and the children will have whitened their 
 lips in it. 
 
 Unrolling its solitary lines the road glides under the 
 old forest. Through the gilded cones of the fir trees 
 appear heights where the sun says good-bye in a feast 
 of light. 
 
 It is the hour when at some turn in the road the 
 iron-shod shoes of the old sawyer ring as he walks. 
 His day's work ended, he has turned aside the flow of 
 water from over his great wheel, to return to his home. 
 With his white hair, his blue eyes, his pale face, his 
 back bent under his large basket, this man from the 
 first excites interest. His personality breathes of no- 
 bility and gentleness. But why is he so sad? 
 
 He has a great sorrow, the old worker. Illness has 
 entered his home. For three years his poor wife has 
 suffered from a cruel ailment. Confined to her bed, 
 
THE VOICE OP NATURE. 29 
 
 she waits impatiently at night for the return of her 
 companion. And he hastens his steps that he may 
 reach her sooner. After the day of labor, begins his 
 office as sick nurse. He carries chips to light the fire, 
 and thinks, during his long walk, of a means to solace 
 and distract his poor wife. Alas! she grows more 
 miserable, daily, and will not long see him return to 
 her, this husband so filled with tender love, and who 
 watches over her declining life. That is why the old 
 sawyer walks with dim eyes and bent back. And yet 
 he is very courageous. 
 
 At his post of duty at the first working hour, he may 
 be seen moving the heavy logs of fir. Alone, with a 
 movement of his lever, he sends them rolling on the 
 chariot, adjusts them, fixes them with clasps, and then 
 slides them while he unclamps the machinery. With 
 an infernal pleasure the sharp teeth bite at the heart of 
 the logs. Then, while the saw frays across the trem- 
 bling fibres, and the logs become planks or beams, the 
 old sawyer occupies himself with some business of 
 secondary importance. At times he sits down, follow- 
 ing the work in course of completion. Long reveries 
 absorb him, interrupted only by the necessity of read- 
 justing the pieces after each voyage of the log. He 
 remembers old happenings. How many fine fir trees 
 has he cut into different things— fine trees brought 
 down from their proud height by the bed of the tor- 
 rent. Child of that valley, he slept then in their 
 
30 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 shadow. One after another, fallen by the force of 
 the wind, or cut down by the woodsmen, they have 
 come to lie on the chariot whose slow and inexorable 
 march has something of the rigor of destiny. Cut into 
 beams, laths, planks and boards of all kinds, they served 
 to build all the cottages of the country. And when a 
 mountaineer slept his last sleep, it was still the hands 
 of the old sawyer who cut the boards for his coffin. 
 To the young and the old, to the rich and the poor, he 
 .had furnished them without distinction. His brow 
 had grown grave under this austere labor. Now, in 
 the midst of his laborious days, when the thought of 
 his dear sick wife haunted him and presentiments of 
 the approaching separation weighed upon him, he had 
 the impression that he ought to prepare the boards for 
 her last bed ; and the metallic song of the saw, making 
 its way through the heart of the wood, seemed to 
 grate on his very heart-strings. 
 
 Near the roaring torrent the sawmill is voiceless. 
 
 The wheel is stopped. The water of the canal is 
 turned aside — sign of mourning. 
 
 The sawyer to-day has not come up. His poor wife 
 has ceased to suffer. At the sound of the tolling bell 
 in the village church the procession of neighbors had 
 carried her to her tomb. 
 
 Hereafter at the desolate fireside where they had 
 loved each other so long, no one would wait for his 
 coming ; no one at his departure would say adieu. 
 
 Still he would go back in the morning where wait- 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 3J[] 
 
 ing work needed him. Nothing would outwardly in- 
 dicate his desolation. 
 
 As ever he would adjust the great blocks on the 
 chariot where the saw would cut ridges. 
 
 For his wife's coffin he had cut boards from a very- 
 old larch, which had been struck by lightning the sum- 
 mer before. He would cut from the same trunk enough 
 to serve him for the same purpose. 
 
 While waiting to rejoin his loved companion he fills 
 his duties with exactitude. But his heart is absent. 
 He thinks of her who has gone on before, there to 
 that land of mystery and of hope. And his noble look, 
 deep and dolorous, is fixed so often on that dawning 
 land of immortal meeting, that he has gained from it 
 something like a reflection of eternity. 
 
 ON THE BANKS OF THE LEMAN. 
 
 I follow the road around the lake, on the route 
 which goes from Geneva to Thonon, on the side of 
 Savoy. Behind me the town of Calvin disappears in 
 a luminous mist, and by the beautiful sun of this late 
 season the Cathedral of St. Peter is grandly effective, 
 with its two towers dominating the hill, or the old 
 Geneva entirely. 
 
 On my left the limpid lake touches the wall which 
 borders the road. The transparency of these deep 
 waters is a feast for eyes having so long seen the Seine, 
 with its sluggish flow and dull tints, and the dark basins 
 
32 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 of the canal of Saint Martin, where unhealthy fish grub 
 on a slimy bottom. 
 
 Pretty white sea-mews cross in their flights through 
 the air. A few steps away a little wild duck, stirring 
 about and busy with his work, delivers himself to his 
 exercises as diver. One sees him dive, reach the bot- 
 tom, head downward, feet in air, nip the grass, stir the 
 waved sand, then like a flash remount to the surface, 
 to begin again a moment later. How happy this lively 
 and fluttering little fisher seems to live. 
 
 In the distance, three boatmen amused themselves 
 infinitely less. In a dead calm, on water unwrinkled 
 by a breath of air, they tried, by means of their gaffs, 
 to push a large boat along loaded with stones. With 
 their united efforts their advancement was scarcely 
 perceptible. The great trees by the bank calmly looked 
 on their efforts, indifferent spectators. Above, in the 
 sky, were little white clouds, which remaining motion- 
 less are of evil portent to navigators lying-to. Poor 
 fellows ! They sadly regarded, from time to time, the 
 two immense yards where, like wings, their fine white 
 sails hung idly. But these wings, in this hour, are idle 
 ornaments. Truly there are in all trades days when 
 nothing goes right. That is what I said to myself in 
 pursuing my route ; and in the silent air I heard for a 
 long time the sound of the wooden shoes of the boat- 
 men, as they poled obstinately, their chests bruised by 
 pushing against their heavy gaffs. 
 
 At sunset, returning by the same road, all was 
 changed. A dry dust flew by mingled with dead 
 leaves. The breeze agitated the old elms so lately 
 
TfrE Voice o^ Mature. 33 
 
 apathetic. Swollen like a swan's wings, the sails 
 shivered tinder the wind, and the boat, in its rapid 
 march, traced a long white line of foam on the dark 
 blue of the lake. One of the men held the rudder, 
 singing the while, and two others were stretched out, 
 asleep by the side of their poles, letting themselves be 
 driven toward the port, like Ulysses, when the pro- 
 pitious winds at last carried him toward Ithaca. 
 
 That is what it is to have the wind in one's favor. 
 If they had foreseen in the morning the good wind of 
 evening, they would not have poled in the afternoon. 
 But that good sleep after, would they have known it? 
 
 ABOUT OLD RAGS. 
 
 Last summer, during a little excursion in Charente- 
 Infereure, they showed me a very interesting chateau, 
 completely restored by the care of the proprietor, an 
 architect of talent. This chateau presents the pecu- 
 liarity of not having been originally built where it is 
 now seen, but a good dozen kilometres farther away. 
 Sold several years ago, it was taken down, piece by 
 piece, and transferred to this place to a site more in 
 conformity with its beauty. 
 
 We shall see how this enterprising proprietor has 
 distinguished himself by other memorable actions. 
 
 One day a violent toothache (a happy pain, as re- 
 sults show) took him to a dentist of the little village. 
 The servant who opened the door for him was just then 
 engaged in washing the floor. Our man, worried as 
 
34 THE VOICE OP NATURE. 
 
 he was with the pain, was none the less struck with 
 the curious dress of the servant. To save herself from 
 the dirty water she had wrapped herself around, from 
 her waist to her feet, with a sort of dull rag, although 
 a multi-colored one, which the connoisseur, at first 
 glance, knew for a tapestry of great artistic value. 
 
 The offending tooth once out, the patient held a 
 short conversation with the dentist, and, as if by 
 chance, said: 
 
 "What is that strip of stuff which envelops your 
 cook?" 
 
 "That? That is a piece of old tapestry, originating 
 I do not know where, which has been lying around here 
 a long time. If it interests you, I have others of them." 
 
 "Show them to me." 
 
 And the two went promenading across to an old shed, 
 where a much larger fragment of the tapestry served 
 to cover a lot of potatoes. Further on another piece 
 covered a vat. It was all dirty, torn and without form. 
 A bandy-legged Venus, an armless Apollo, made pite- 
 ous figures before a Jupiter with his beard pulled out, 
 and a bird of Juno without a tail. The visitor recog- 
 nized in these poor rags some of the famous Aubusson 
 tapestries, and showed his regret to see these precious 
 remains put to such vile uses. 
 
 "Would you like them?" said the dentist. "I would 
 much prefer a cask of your old cognac." 
 
 The bargain was made. The scraps followed the 
 visitor. A cask of cognac, of the value of six or eight 
 hundred francs, emigrated to the professional. 
 
 Some years later, the proprietor installed two su- 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 35 
 
 perb specimens of Aubusson, repaired with the great- 
 est care. He had spent a considerable sum (they 
 spoke of twenty thousand francs) on this long and 
 difficult labor. 
 
 "Come and see your tapestries," he wrote to the den- 
 tist. 
 
 The dentist came to see them, but left there furious, 
 to begin suit at law. He said he had been deceived, 
 robbed, and exhaled his anger all over the county. 
 
 As was just, he lost his suit. A droll story, is it 
 not? Yet I guarantee it on every point. 
 
 What if we drew a moral from it ? 
 
 People who guard traditions whose value they do 
 not know, resemble this ignoramus of a dentist. They 
 allow them to become moth-eaten and covered with 
 dust. There comes a clearer mind which draws the 
 traditions forth from forgetfulness, cleanses them from 
 impurities, completes them in the spirit of old, and 
 makes them shine like new and actual things. What 
 do the narrow-spirited guardians, with their obtuse in- 
 telligence, do? 
 
 For the price of all pains taken, all services rendered, 
 they cry "Haro" on the restorer, and try them for 
 \ heresy. 
 
 THE TWO CUIRASSIERS. 
 
 The room is vast and old. It is the most spacious 
 of that old farm where a path in the Black Forest led 
 me. Outside the snow falls slowly and silently. 
 
36 THE VOICE OF NATURE, 
 
 One would say that among those myriads of flakes, 
 suspended in the calm air, each knew whence it 
 came and where it goes, and chooses its place before 
 settling down. 
 
 Inside is an absolute silence. I hear the breathing of 
 an enormous dog asleep under the furnace, and the 
 slightest grindings of the wheels in the family clock. 
 One has the impression that time is standing still, that 
 nothing has ever been, and that there will never be 
 anything any more. I let myself sink into the depths 
 of solitude and forgetfulness, like into transparent and 
 bottomless water. 
 
 In the house, no one. Only a little old woman re- 
 mained in the lodge. Seeing me, a hungry tourist, she 
 hastened to the kitchen and prepared breakfast. But 
 this solitude is so good, this halt so beneficent. I 
 would that the good old woman would stay a long 
 time — always. 
 
 To my despair, my eyes fell on two large images 
 fixed to the wall opposite. They were two cuirassiers 
 who formed pendants to a tiny looking-glass. They 
 are mounted on two dancing horses, both black, and 
 coming at a grand trot. Each man has his sabre drawn, 
 and there they are, ready to defend themselves. Why 
 must these, two accursed images recall in this tranquil 
 place Europe under arms, barracks, manoeuvres, and 
 all that follows? Accursed militarism! where have 
 you not come to find a nest? 
 
 And I looked at my cuirassiers, from afar at first, 
 then closer. From afar they looked like the vulgar 
 images that cost ten pfennigs, exact reproductions of 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 37 
 
 each other. It was surely the two sides of the same 
 horse, with the same mane, and the same tail. Height 
 and gestures of the riders seemed identical. But seen 
 nearer, one saw that they pretended to be portraits of 
 persons. A careful examination of the one on the 
 right, a handsome blond with the head of a Suabian, 
 revealed it to me. Then wishing to see more closely 
 the figure of the cavalier on the left, I saw that the 
 face was totally lacking. The place was empty. The 
 man sat on his horse, stiff, threatening, having the at- 
 titude, the presence of a soldier in combat, all except 
 the face. This seemed to me to be really singular, and 
 I tried to understand it, when a delicious odor of cook- 
 ing bacon spread through the room, soon followed by 
 the old woman, who busily brought a magnificent 
 omelette. 
 
 This was not the moment to speak to this excellent 
 person of anything except her work of culinary art. 
 And the best way to praise that was to eat it, to con- 
 sume it, to do it honor, otherwise than in vain compli- 
 ments. I did not fail, and on the benevolent and frank 
 face of my hostess I could soon observe the happy effect 
 of the mute homage offered by my appetite. 
 
 Conversation was soon established, and I could ask 
 her then who were the two conscripts, of whom one 
 had no face. 
 
 "They are two brothers/' she said, "but one's face 
 came unglued. Our young soldiers of the cavalry 
 like this style of portrait. Being proud of their posi- 
 tion they dislike to have photographs taken on foot, 
 like simple infantry. To be represented each alone on 
 
38 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 horseback would cost too dear. So then they take an 
 ordinary photograph and cut out their faces and paste 
 them on the images all ready for them. That gives 
 them a grand air and renders them very glorious ; but 
 it is difficult to distinguish them apart, and often, as 
 you see, the glue does not stick." 
 
 I quitted the isolated house where I had passed so 
 pleasant an hour. By the white peace of the lost paths, 
 under the dreamy fir trees loaded with snow, along by 
 the rocks where the winter played fantastic tricks with 
 frost and ice, I slowly regained the valley. And I 
 thought of the men who, to give themselves deport- 
 ment and appearance, framed their physiognomies in 
 ready-made forms, of all those who take on airs, of a 
 style, a language, of dogmas, where their individual 
 mind and their individuality is drowned. 
 
 This politician, man of a clique, this believer, party 
 man, all the sectarians, prickly, bellicose, on their rear- 
 ing hobbies, what are they often? 
 
 The stereotyped reproduction of an image ready- 
 made, where their own faces hold but an insignificant 
 place, at least, if that face has not disappeared. 
 
 SHELTER. 
 
 Nothing resembles the sea less than the sea itself. 
 
 Yesterday it was blue under a pure sky, and the 
 
 white sails were mirrored in smiling waters. To-day 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 39 
 
 it growls. It has put on its gray dress of days of 
 tempest. The waves break against the rocks with 
 much fracas, and in the open, the sailors, wrapped in 
 their oilskins, struggle painfully. 
 
 Is the sea grander thus, and more beautiful ? It may 
 be that your opinion and mine are indifferent to it. 
 It cares nothing as to who may look at it. The proof 
 of that is that it launches at everyone spray and sheets 
 of water. Decidedly, there are days where one will do 
 well not to approach it. 
 
 I withdrew into this pine forest to see and hear the 
 sea without being spattered. The place where I am 
 resembles a battlefield. It is not here where the 
 zephyrs have their homes. 
 
 Seated on the powerful trunk of a fallen pine, I see 
 nothing about me but ruins encumbering the ground. 
 Broken branches, shafts shattered midway, splinters of 
 wood thrown far. Everywhere the traces of the vio- 
 lence of the elements. I have just seen the pendant 
 of that in a neighboring beach, where appear, half 
 submerged by sand, the mast and keel of a vessel. 
 
 In a great number of things one always discovers 
 something comic. This great pine, checked in its fall 
 by two neighbors and catching on both sides by its 
 branches, does it not look like a drunkard returning to 
 his home sustained by the shoulders of two charitable 
 companions ? 
 
 But here comes the rain. Fine and hard, it walks 
 rather than falls. The wind drives it and throws it 
 in your face. The place becomes untenable. What 
 shall I do? To return to the lodge would be too silly. 
 
40 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 Let me take refuge under that tuft of green oaks. Im- 
 provised seats show that someone else has found refuge 
 here before. One would say he was in a room. 
 Neither rain nor wind can reach you. The marvelous 
 hiding place ! And how interesting to observe ! On 
 the side of the ground one enters it as though entering 
 a cave. On the side of the sea it has the form of a roof 
 beginning on a level with the ground and rising in a 
 slanting direction up to a height of three or four yards. 
 All the trees which form it are inclined. The wind has 
 literally laid them low. Their attitude evokes the re- 
 membrance of the furious tempests before which all 
 bends and breaks. By continually bending the trunk 
 they have contracted a definite curvature. 
 
 Their rough trunks, full of knots, have ended by 
 becoming deformed, and are twisted like a slave's body 
 under the lash. 
 
 But they had pushed out on their backs innumerable 
 little branches, forming a fleece. It is so thick that one 
 could sleep on it without fear. Sometimes ivy, black- 
 berry vines, or other climbing plants come to mingle 
 their branches among the oak tv/igs, and the nest "b^ 
 comes thicker still. 
 
 And little by little it forms a roof as firm as a thatch, 
 and under which one is completely sheltered. 
 
 Without the violence of the assaults endured, these 
 trees would, like others, have grown straight. But 
 their trunks, higher and more slender, would have been 
 naked below. The rain and the wind would pass at 
 their ease, and the traveler would find no protection 
 there. 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. ±\ 
 
 The more I look, the more my sympathy and atten- 
 tion are attracted to them. A soul's history seems to 
 me to be traced in their vaultings and their entangled 
 twistings. 
 
 There are helpful souls, souls hospitable and sure, 
 gentle with the wounded ones of earth, comforting to 
 weary travelers. Near them we feel in security, 
 destiny seems less obscure, man less wicked, God 
 nearer. 
 
 Penetrate, if you are capable and worthy, the secret 
 of those souls. You will find there the traces of strug- 
 gles, scars and mutilations. It is because they are 
 bent that they guarantee us. Their torment has made 
 shelters of them. And once more does Nature offer a 
 symbol of the soul. 
 
 Never more will I go and sit down under the little 
 green oaks of the wild coast without thinking of you, 
 bruised hearts, made sacred by trials and misery, and 
 who, having known tears, have learned to console 
 others. 
 
 HOW WE MAKE ENEMIES. 
 
 In doing evil actions, do you believe? You are not 
 wrong. But often also in doing kind actions we reach 
 the same result. This is the proof of it. 
 
 Under a leafy green oak, on which a climbing vine 
 thickened the shade, the family takes a meal. Parents 
 
42 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 and children do it honor, for they have returned from 
 the seashore, through the deep woods, and everyone 
 knows that the salt air sharpens the appetite, and every- 
 one knows that hunger reigns in the forest since it 
 drives even the wolf out. 
 
 Attentive to the needs of his family, the father 
 carves and serves each with meat and drink. It was a 
 race as to who should first ask bread or meat or hand 
 his empty cup with an eloquent gesture. As to the 
 youngest child, he asked nothing, for he had been fed, 
 and the satisfied nursling sleeps in his hammock with 
 closed fists. 
 
 Soon, in the dish occupying the center of the table, 
 nothing remained of the roast but the bone. "What a 
 fine bone for a dog !" cried one of the children. Scarce- 
 ly had he finished speaking when a fine bloodhound 
 came out of the thicket. Whence came he? Who 
 can tell? Doubtless he was hungry, too, and the 
 smell of the roast meat had guided him. 
 
 He was, besides, so polite, so discreet, neither ag- 
 gressive nor teasing. Seated five paces away, he 
 wagged his tail, lifted his head, and his quivering nos- 
 trils seemed to consult the perfumes of the meal. So 
 much modesty gained all the votes. Impossible to re- 
 fuse so courteous a solicitor ; all are agreed, they treat 
 him like an old acquaintance. Each one threw him a 
 bone, and when he had eaten them, they gave him the 
 one on the platter. Papa even went so far as to give 
 him a drink in his own dish. The dog crunched all, 
 lapped all and licked the dish clean, while his eyes said 
 "more." 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 43 
 
 Too bad ; there is no more. 
 
 What will he do, do you think? Retire in thanking 
 us after his fashion? Not at all; he gave us a cross 
 look, showed his teeth and began to bark in his loudest 
 voice. The children were afraid, and the baby awoke, 
 frightened. It became necessary to drive the guest 
 away with stones. 
 
 And that is how, with the best efforts, we make 
 enemies. 
 
 This dog is the image of certain people to whom you 
 have done kind acts, rendered service, sacrificed your 
 time, loaned your money, opened your house and table. 
 When you have nothing more to offer them they con- 
 sider it as an offence, and leave you, showing their 
 fists. 
 
 WITHOUT A WATCH. 
 
 In the olden times no one possessed the exact time. 
 They counted time, grosso modo, on sun-dials or by 
 hour-glasses, often very imperfect. If the sun veiled 
 his face, or the slave, whose duty it was to turn the 
 hour-glass, fell asleep, the hour was lost. To find it 
 again they had to go to their neighbors, or wait until 
 a cloudless sky and the sun, that great regulator of 
 chronology, fixed the time at noon. 
 
 To-day everyone has his watch. There are watches 
 of all prices and kinds. Some, at the end of a solid 
 chain, might serve, by whirling it, as an arm of defence. 
 They recall by their size the famous "onions" of Nur- 
 
44 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 emberg. Others are so small that one might swallow 
 them with impunity. It would be difficult, in melting 
 all the precious metal in them, to obtain enough gold to 
 fill an American's tooth. These tiny watches nestle in 
 collars, belts, bracelets, and even in rings. But the 
 army of watches does not suffice. We add to these 
 useful, portable articles the heavy artillery of large 
 and small clocks, and alarm clocks besides. 
 
 And do we know the time any better? That is a 
 question. So many clocks are in their dotage and so 
 many are out of order, without counting those that will 
 not go. But we are determined to know the time day 
 and night. If the ancients were troubled about the 
 hours, we are troubled about minutes and seconds. 
 
 With the present organization of our life it is in- 
 dispensable to know the train time, that of the boat, 
 theater, carriages, lyceums, schools, boarding-houses, 
 military and administrations, and is an essential condi- 
 tion of a regular activity. In the bosom of the daily 
 movement, in that buzzing hive which we call civilized 
 life, a man without the time is a lost man. 
 
 The time spurs and hurries us. Watch the people 
 running, and consulting from time to time their 
 watches, anxiously looking at the big public clocks, and 
 those in the windows which, oh, torture ! indicate a 
 different hour for each. The train will leave them, 
 the school-door will be closed, the banks will have 
 stopped business for the day, the foreman where you 
 work will fine you. They are slaves of time, and not 
 one can forget for one single minute that time is 
 monev., 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 4g 
 
 Do not be so foolish as to inconvenience yourselves. 
 It is always permitted us to find this tyranny of the 
 time insupportable. Have you ever eaten at a railway 
 station restaurant, hurried through a dinner in twenty 
 minutes, haunted every moment by the sinister cry of 
 the butler, "ten minutes more; five minutes more"? 
 These dinners at the buffet are the image of our hasty 
 and worried life. I always want to tell that butler, 
 with his fatal brow, this miniature Satan, to "Get along, 
 get along with your ten minutes." 
 
 In a reunion of friends where they talk and give up 
 an hour, if anyone should take out his watch, I should 
 feel like confiscating it. 
 
 What, because we were born in the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, must we be constrained to have hanging forever 
 above our heads that continual menace of the hour that 
 flies or is coming? The tick-tack of a clock will domi- 
 nate over all other music. We shall be fixed on that ob- 
 session of the time as insects are stuck on the paste- 
 board of a collection. 
 
 No, indeed ! It is one of the rights of men also to 
 cease to wear the harness of counted days, and to live 
 forgetful of watchmakers. However numerous the 
 wished-for pleasures for which we render life*bitter, all 
 of us, I abandon them to you. Is there one which 
 values the forgetting of time to race at hazard through 
 the deep woods or on the solitary beach? To the 
 tempter who may come in these lonely paths and offer 
 to tell me the hour on his first-class chronometer, and 
 in addition offer to give me the chronometer as a pres- 
 ent, I would say, "Get thee behind me, Satan." 
 
4(5 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 A certain watchmaker, being something of a joker, 
 procured for me, for a whole month, the advantage of 
 having no watch. A wave of salt water had touched 
 mine. It stopped instantly. Salt-water baths, it seems, 
 are fatal to those machines. Under the pretence of 
 repairing the damage, this malignant artist, to whom 
 the watch had been taken, kept it long weeks. Should 
 I ever see it again ? I began to weary of the pleasure 
 of being separated from it. While waiting for it I owe 
 to that incident exquisite impressions. Whole days, 
 all in one piece, without seam or cut ; vast days where 
 it seemed that time had ceased to fly and had made a 
 pause. Then, as it is sometimes necessary to know 
 if it is the hour of repasts, or that of sleep, I owed the 
 knowledge to signs which served to mark the time. 
 What a bourgeois fashion, not to say stupid, to pull 
 out one's watch and to say, "It is forty minutes after 
 five !" It is as dry and prosaic as possible. How 
 much more poetic and more interesting to say, "It is 
 such an hour, because the shadows lengthen, the flow- 
 ers close their petals, the rabbit begins to leave his 
 hiding-place, the fish approach the land, the moon is 
 rising, or the chickens go to roost !" When one has a 
 watch one ends by no longer noticing these signs, 
 charming in themselves, and which keep us in contact 
 with the great universal life. The time becomes an 
 abstraction, a mathematical quantity, a skeleton. It 
 loses the color and the seal of living things. 
 
 I advise everyone to hang his watch up sometimes, 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 47 
 
 unless he prefers to put it in pawn. Besides, to facili- 
 tate the experience, I assert my readiness to furnish the 
 address of my watchmaker. 
 
 WITHOUT A PURSE. 
 
 Many things stupefy the heart, or insensibly harden 
 it. One of these is the inveterate habit of having 
 money: When that habit has come down from many 
 generations, and atavism is mingled with it, the case 
 is still worse. I regard as a happy, ephemeral acci- 
 dent that which comes to cut the thread of such a ter- 
 rible habit once in a while. 
 
 The more familiar one becomes with money, the less 
 one knows its value and its part. Is it to go too far to 
 say that our purse is one of those friends whom we 
 must distrust as much as our enemies ? Not only is it 
 too complaisant, too ready to settle accounts with our 
 imprudences, our prodigalities and our follies. Not 
 only does it constitute for weak characters a perpetual 
 temptation, but it also causes isolation. It hinders us 
 from feeling the distress of others deeply. By having 
 money at all times one at last begins to think that it is 
 unnatural not to have it, and they risk believing that 
 poverty is an aberration, if not imposture. 
 
 Happy is he who loses his purse, or clever pickpock- 
 ets relieve him of it. For the moment he complains and 
 groans, but the trial is salutary, and the lessons which 
 
48 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 it contains are precious. No contents of a purse is 
 worth them. 
 
 And at first there is rather an agreeable side to the 
 accident; I might say, honey in the chalice. 
 
 You have just been robbed. If you are in a country 
 where you are known, everyone hastens to your aid. 
 They pay your omnibus, they take you to breakfast, 
 they lend you money, they even go so far as to offer 
 you their purses. Are these witnesses nothing? You 
 can get along without them, you say. That is not your 
 real thought. Whoever has not a bad heart will ad- 
 mit that they love him, and in case of need they would 
 deprive themselves for his sake. However hard we 
 have tried to be positive, skeptics, insensible, a little 
 kindness touches us in depths where the purse does not 
 count. 
 
 Still, if it is written that some day you will lose your 
 purse, ask that it shall be on neighboring coasts. On 
 stranger soil and among unknown people it would be 
 different. Then you would taste the dregs of the 
 chalice. 
 
 You have just been deprived of your money. From 
 one moment to another you are to be excommunicated. 
 Yes, excommunicated ! There exists through the 
 whole world a federation to which money associates us. 
 Have, then, a little, you form a part of the fraternity. 
 You have the means of passing where you will, of 
 opening all doors, the means of making yourself es- 
 teemed and understood. As soon as your money is 
 gone, your whole person is put in question. I sup- 
 pose, in fact, that they do not know you. 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 49 
 
 With money you can procure shelter and food with- 
 out showing your credentials. Without money, try to 
 buy a little loaf of bread or to pass a night under a 
 roof, and you will see surprising things. As soon as 
 your money is lacking you will find yourself exposed to 
 the most indiscreet questions. Who are you, sir? 
 Whence have you come? Have you certificates, 
 recommendations ? For, in fact, by what right do you 
 ask bread and a shelter? Am I sure of dealing with 
 a decent man? 
 
 Do not tax me with exaggeration. These things 
 happen every day. Pure illusion, to believe in the 
 credit of good people. Their honesty does not cover 
 any but those among their own class, their compatriots. 
 A name, however honorable, a loyal hand, the coun- 
 tenance of a good man, protect one within a certain 
 radius only. Beyond that their power diminishes, and 
 even ceases entirely. Everybody cannot know you. 
 As to your physiognomy, do not count upon it; so 
 many impostors have a mask of virtue. 
 
 No, there is no direct and sure means of making 
 others accept one as a man of means in a strange coun- 
 try when one is without resources, without notoriety, 
 without any backing. And yet, I would not have you 
 be entirely without some trials of this kind. They will 
 cause you to reflect, and make you more humane. 
 Nothing makes a man respect misery, nor hinders him 
 from treating too harshly a passer like a vagabond, 
 like having been once in the place of this passer, sus- 
 pected of vagabondage. Few vicissitudes are so cruel 
 as that of not knowing where to dine, nor sleep, andisee 
 
5Q THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 doors shut by people who are not half your equal. But 
 if these rude rubbings of existence, these cavalier treat- 
 ments, make us better and more clement, the experience 
 is never too dearly bought. Take your trouble in 
 patience, and even, if you believe me, try to seize the 
 pleasant side. Any imbecile can be gay at home at his 
 own table, among his friends and acquaintances, while 
 in the bosom of social security. He has more wealth 
 than he deserves, and enjoys a prestige often exag- 
 gerated. But to keep one's good humor when fortune 
 plays you a hangman's trick, takes away your mark, 
 declasses you and treats you like a barefoot, in that 
 consists heroism. And in any case, that is not trifling. 
 
 And, besides, when those unhappy days have passed, 
 aside from the acquired experience, one has the benefit 
 of interesting recollections. 
 
 Just here one of this very sort surges up in my 
 memory. Why not tell it to you ? 
 
 It was in Heidelberg, in July, 1875, one Sunday 
 night. I was returning from Goettengen on the way 
 to Strasburg. But I stopped there to see one of the 
 prettiest cities of Germany, and to hear some discourses 
 by illustrious professors, on Monday. 
 
 I had passed the evening with one of them. In 
 leaving his house I took a fancy to count my money in 
 the moonlight. By what curious phenomenon was it 
 that I found my purse almost empty? I do not know. 
 But the fact was that there remained exactly enough 
 to pay my passage to Strasburg, and make a frugal 
 breakfast "on my thumb" in the morning. That was 
 all. The least unexpected thing would reduce me to 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. §\ 
 
 the most painful extremity. What should I do? Re- 
 turn to the savant who had invited me ? It distressed 
 me to think of soliciting a place to sleep on, or to bor- 
 row. Take the night train for Alsace ? But I wanted, 
 to see Heidelberg, and hear Kuno Vischer, To leave 
 in the night would have seemed to me to be unworthy 
 of a man. 
 
 My resolution was soon taken. I would pass the 
 night under the stars. After all, on such a night it was 
 almost a pleasure, and that would distinguish me from 
 so many folk, who go stupidly to their rooms, by a 
 sort of old routine, and sleep every night in their beds. 
 
 So I did. Already I began to taste of the sweetness 
 of this out-door slumber, when a storm suddenly broke, 
 and constrained me to quickly seek a refuge in the 
 station. About two o'clock in the morning an em- 
 ploye closed the waiting-room. He put me out with- 
 out form or process, brutally, as one might chase a dog. 
 I ended by finding an abandoned shed, where I took 
 refuge; and this night under the stars made me see 
 anything but the stars. 
 
 But in the morning the sky cleared. Having washed 
 in the Neckar, at daybreak, I went up to the castle. 
 The sun came up. On every tree scintillated drops of 
 dew like diamonds. On every twig a bird sang. The 
 air was pure, all Nature joyous, and the solitude ab- 
 solute. On the lower branches of an old oak a squir- 
 rel sat nibbling a hazel nut. He allowed me to ap- 
 proach, fearlessly. I could have touched him with the 
 end of my cane. The blackbirds came walking almost 
 beneath my feet. How confiding they are ! I thought. 
 
52 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 Could they. have understood that, like them, I had no 
 money ? 
 
 I do not know what it was : the intoxication of joy 
 that made me wish to sing in this early light, and to 
 feel myself freer because I was poorer for the mo- 
 ment. 
 
 I would not give the remembrance of this experience 
 for a purse full, and persuaded that it is for your good, 
 I wish you, friend reader, above all, if you are young 
 and fortunate, to find yourself sometimes without 
 money. 
 
 A FISHING PARTY. 
 
 The evening was pleasant, the sea was at ebb, arid 
 idly and almost noiselessly came up to expire at our 
 feet. What if we were to go net fishing? This is the 
 moment or never. 
 
 That is what we thought aloud, my friend and I, the 
 other evening, and as soon as said we began to put 
 the project in motion. But to fish in this manner, 
 what is that? asks the landsman. It means to- drag 
 along the sandy beach a net thirty or forty metres long, 
 and take therein the fish that approach the shore. 
 
 To do that under the best conditions there must be 
 five or six, and seek the most solitary places, where the 
 fish are not disturbed by people continually passing. 
 
 Here, opposite the lighthouse of Cordouan, the best 
 beaches are those of the Grand-Cote and Bonne-Anse. 
 Ten or twelve kilometres of route — a bagatelle. We set 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 53 
 
 ourselves at once to search companions ; that is to say, 
 men not afraid of getting wet or of passing a sleepless 
 night. 
 
 And we found two professors, one from Bergerac, 
 the other from Geneva, and also a locksmith and his 
 apprentice. The locksmith's mother-in-law owned a 
 donkey, with a name really predestined to this sort of 
 escapades. She was called Sardine. Sardine was 
 harnessed to a cart where there was room for the seine 
 and our fishing clothes. Then she took the road while 
 we followed the beach, hitting the cool, firm sand with 
 our bare feet as we went. 
 
 Toward eleven o'clock we reached the end of our 
 road, an isolated hut in a deserted immensity, dotted 
 here and there with thin bunches of rushes. Sardine 
 was installed in the hut ; and we, tied up and rigged in 
 old woolen garments, put the seine in the water. 
 
 This is how it is done. Four men walk in front 
 drawing on a strong rope, a fifth is at the other end 
 and remains close to the shore. The sixth carries the 
 bag. This is an uncertain condition for him. When 
 they catch nothing it is a sinecure; if they make a 
 good haul he must suffer the consequences. 
 
 We walked along without speaking a word, with a 
 regular step, pulling, pulling on the rope, with the 
 water up to our armpits. The red fire of the Cordouan, 
 the electric flashes from the lighthouse of the Coubre 
 lighted us from the distance, and from the dark sky 
 twinkled the stars so that there fell light enough to 
 direct us. But what struck us the most was the phos- 
 phorescence of the water. As soon as one touched 
 
54 THB VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 the water it darted fires. Our bodies were surrounded 
 by circles of light. The seine, in gliding through the 
 waves, threw off white lights ; and near us, under the 
 surface, we could distinguish rapid flashes, some large 
 and others small, and thin like rays. It was the tracks 
 of the fish, flat or long, flying from the trap. 
 
 Suddenly, from behind us, a whistle sounded shrilly. 
 It was the signal to draw in. So we made an oblique 
 turn toward the shore, and with a slow effort, our 
 legs straining, we drew back the net made heavy by the 
 water, the algae and the sand. At last it was on 
 shore, and everyone sprang to look at it. White was 
 seen. This was a good sign. A half dozen of mullets 
 were there showing their silvery flanks. The bearer 
 of the sack gathered them up eagerly. Then search- 
 ing all parts of the net by the light of the lantern, 
 turning the seaweeds over, and feeling in the sand, 
 we found soles, small turbots, and rayfish with their 
 poisonous darts, which all avoided touching. 
 
 As soon as the net was emptied, a cry sounded out, 
 "To the water," and with water still trickling down us 
 we went in again. 
 
 We returned to the water ten times, fifteen times. 
 Sometimes the net was almost empty — that was a de- 
 ception. But hope animated the workers ; and besides, 
 the night was so perfect! That alone sufficed for our 
 pains. At other times the seine brought in good for- 
 tune. A large turbot fought among the meshes and 
 slapped the sand with his tail, such noisy, resounding 
 slaps as rejoiced the hearts of the fishers. All of 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 55 
 
 them were engulfed in the sack, and the bearer be- 
 gan to sweat like a porter. But it was two o'clock in 
 the morning and the tide was rising rapidly. Already 
 those who held the rope in front had received big salt 
 waves and lost their footing for the moment. Wet 
 completely over their heads, they renounced the labor, 
 folded the seine and carried it to the cart. Sardine 
 started back with the booty and the bundles of wet 
 clothes. The fishers, in dry garments, walked back. 
 
 But at this trade the appetite develops. So the lock- 
 smith took care to light a fire in his spacious workshop 
 and improvise a supper. Sardine had reached home 
 first. At the moment when we reached there a de- 
 lightful odor of frying fish came to our senses, and we 
 did them full honor — our fish conquered from the 
 ocean in fair fight. "How fresh they are, and how 
 delicious !" That was what we said while eating, and 
 drinking the thin wine of the country. And in the 
 earliest morning light, to the accompaniment of the 
 song of the larks, which darted above, we regained our 
 domiciles with our portions of the catch. 
 
 In very truth, if anyone offered me choice of the 
 most varied pleasures, I should choose this one: to 
 cast my seine at the big shore on a starlit night. 
 
 WHEAT. 
 
 Certain products of the earth, more than others, 
 have a sacred character. Among them is wheat. 
 
56 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 With the Greeks, Ceres appears before us always 
 crowned with blades of wheat. The seed of wheat, 
 among the Egyptians, was the symbol of immortality. 
 With Christianity, by the bread which Christ broke, 
 one evening, in sign of sacrifice and of the eternal 
 communion, one could say that wheat has entered into 
 the apotheosis. 
 
 Nothing which concerns it is indifferent to me. 
 What poetry in the sowing of it ! Regarding the black 
 furrows, to which laborious hands confide the bread of 
 to-morrow, Victor Hugo shows us the luminous even- 
 ing: 
 
 "Reaching high, e'en to the stars, 
 The august gesture of the sower." 
 
 Jean Aicard sings : 
 
 "That the great Napoleon dies, 
 And that they live fifty years in peace, 
 Thousands will laugh where but one weeps ; 
 But let the bread fail at its hour, 
 The stupidest laughs not for fears." 
 
 From the day when it peeps out of the ground 
 to meet the last rays of the October sunshine, through 
 the long hibernal sleep, the awakening in the spring, 
 until the harvest in August, an uneasy attention fol- 
 lows the evolution of this blade of tender wheat, des- 
 tined to become the nourishment of men. 
 
 In June is the high tide of these green waves, starred 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 57 
 
 with poppies and bluets. In the midst of these waves 
 one sees apple trees stand out like islets. The cry of 
 the quail sounds through the paths. And above, the 
 lark, with its inexhaustible throat, shakes out his 
 rosary of pearls. 
 
 In July the yellowed fields are like gold. One could 
 say, as the ripened heads brush against each other 
 with the wind, that one heard the grains falling into the 
 measures. The bread sings on foot on dry days, but 
 if the horizon is veiled, a shudder runs through the 
 stalks, like in the hearts of the peasants. It suffices 
 for a storm to destroy the year's labor. 
 
 At last the harvest, the barn, the threshers. Then the 
 grinding at the mill, and the dough of the bakers or 
 the housewives. The bread is on the table. Before 
 you eat of it think that it is the fruit of the toil of man, 
 of the sun and of God. Take it in gratitude and 
 brotherhood. Do not allow a crumb to be lost. Break 
 it willingly with those who have none. As the wind 
 blows, the spring gushes, as the morning shines, the 
 wheat must grow for all. 
 
 And it is this wheat, liberal gift of God, laborious 
 conquest of toilers ; this wheat which all creatures wait 
 for, which nourishes the widow, sustains the orphan; 
 it is this wheat which you stake, and confiscate, mon- 
 opolist! You put your hand on that which belongs 
 to none. Have you the right to hide the sun, to make 
 yourself gold from its rays? Have you the right to 
 
58 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 capture the springs? You have no greater right to 
 monopolize wheat. Your commerce is an infamy, a 
 crime against humanity. It is a general shame that 
 you are allowed to exercise it. Do not speak to me 
 of liberty. The liberty of these makers of famine is 
 privation, hunger, sicknesses, misery, death for the 
 most suffering and the most interesting ones among 
 us. 
 
 A woman steals a loaf of bread because she is re- 
 duced to the last extremities. There are logicians 
 who declare it to be dangerous not to impose punish- 
 ment on that act of anarchy. Impunity for such a 
 wrong-doing might bring forth imitators. 
 
 How it is reasoned, that, how scrupulously just it 
 is, with that strict justice which is the sister of iniquity ! 
 
 But if it is dangerous that someone should take a 
 little loaf of bread, what would it be if that other 
 awards himself mountains of wheat, and puts the key 
 to his storehouses into his pocket? To usurp the right 
 to take a little loaf through hunger, that is anarchy, 
 you say ? I accord you that ; but so thin ! You must 
 look at it closely to be able to see it. To monopolize 
 the wheat is monumental, gigantic anarchy. It is an 
 act of hostility against the whole human race. 
 
 So monstrous a privilege claimed by one alone, is 
 the rights of multitudes rolled under foot. They find 
 it simple, however. 
 
 As to me, known or unknown, I hate you, you who 
 speculate on the bread. I put you in the ranks of the 
 slave-dealers. There is blood on your hands and on 
 your money. 
 
THE VOICE OP NATURE. 59 
 
 Profaners, blasphemers, accursed traffickers, hu- 
 manity must be a flock of sheep to tolerate such wolves ! 
 
 A PEST. 
 
 The train rolled toward the country where the 
 springtime, so long desired and so slow to come, had 
 at last made its entry. And the eyes of the travelers 
 saturated with gray wintry tint, of narrow streets, and 
 roofs spiny with chimneys, reposed on the snow of 
 cherry blossoms, on the tender springing grass and the 
 length of the woods and hedges. 
 
 Man will never tire of seeing Nature awaken from 
 her long sleep. When the peach trees dress them- 
 selves again in pink, the pear trees in white, and the 
 buds on the apple trees burst forth, leaving bunches 
 of flowers to flow out of their torn envelopes, the sad- 
 dest takes a new hold on life, and, as wine ferments in 
 the cellar, in the season when the sap mounts to the 
 shoots of the vine, human hope is reborn in the uni- 
 versal renewal. 
 
 Why must the whole mercantile tribe of grocers 
 and storekeepers of that quality have discovered it, 
 too? That race is pitiless as it is without ideality. 
 We are created and put into the world to acquire their 
 products and bear their advertisements. In public 
 conveyances where we go, in the books that we open, 
 
(JO THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 on the bench where we seek repose, on the wall in 
 front of us, at the bottom of our plates and of our 
 glasses, everywhere the desire for notoriety pursues us. 
 The day has for its wound the posters; the night, the 
 gas lamps which flood the eyes with their alternatives 
 of dazzling light or dense darkness. At the theater, 
 between the acts a curtain falls. You leave the so- 
 ciety of the poets and become the prey of the indis- 
 creet cloth which thus imposes its advertisements on 
 your attention. Turn your eyes from the curtain and 
 you will find the same advertisements in the paper in 
 which you are trying to take refuge. At last you 
 leave — you escape toward the fields, dreaming of puri- 
 fying your eyes of all that multi-colored orgy. Alas! 
 if you thought to behold Nature in peace, you count 
 without your host, my friend. YoUr taste for Nature 
 will serve the commercial interests. These are the 
 first of all the interests; they will not allow you to 
 forget it. 
 
 You love to see the daisies star the fields. Good ! It 
 is there that they will paste the poster which you must 
 see. Suddenly, in the full joy of contemplation, you 
 will see, flamboyant on a placard, "Bornibus Mustard/' 
 
 A pretty corner of the woods seems to wish to at- 
 tract your eyes ; quickly they place there an advertise- 
 ment, "Pneu Michelin." 
 
 In the field of Luzerne the "Biberon Robert" watches 
 for you — on a roof is ambuscaded "Jambon Olida" or 
 "Chocolat Suchard." 
 
 And the farther you go, the more the scandal grows. 
 Soon the sides of the railroad become a palisade of 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. (Q 
 
 enormous boards, on which a lot of emulsions, and 
 other things, impudently force your attention. No 
 more free horizon, no more views which the eyes may 
 seek from the windows. Between the advertisements 
 of cocoa, beer, biscuits and shoes there might be places 
 left had they not been taken by the different news- 
 papers, each crazy to proclaim its million readers. The 
 flotsam of the sea, the rocky flanks of the mountains, 
 have suffered from the impure contact of the poster. 
 Under their slave's livery they vaunt the glory of hotel- 
 keepers and the delights of the casino. 
 
 Where will this inhuman fury end? For a long 
 time more, I fear, we will be condemned to see its 
 progress. 
 
 But in spite of the disgust with which it inspires me, 
 I hate less this hideous travesty of our civilization than 
 I hate an analogous flood sapping the spiritual world. 
 Of this flood, the most extravagant advertising is but 
 a feeble image. 
 
 It may be fastidious to fall into the hands of these 
 makers of notoriety, but at least the conscience is not 
 crushed so long as it relates solely to mustard, boot- 
 blacking, cigarette paper, or spectacles that will not 
 fall from your nose. The situation grows worse rapid- 
 ly when you become the prey of these merchants of 
 antidotes for political poison, and of sacred mounte- 
 banks. The commercial advertisement wishes nothing 
 of us but our pennies. The other, when it says to us, 
 "Take my bear," disposes itself to take us to them- 
 selves. Do you not find it odious to think that you 
 are the gudgeon or carp sought for by these astute 
 
62 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 fishermen? If you do not care you are more philoso- 
 phic than I am, or you have the temperament of a 
 batrachian. God knows how difficult it is now to avoid 
 the industrials dreaming of capturing us for the bene- 
 fit of a party. Their numberless engines are raised 
 everywhere. They operate night and day, on land and 
 sea, on voyage and at table. Hide yourself in no mat- 
 ter what solitude, they await you there. Not satisfied 
 with speculating on grown men, they spread their 
 operations to infancy. There is no age that is shel- 
 tered from their temptations. Even if they worked 
 from good motives, to enlighten men, to convince them 
 and lead them to the right road ! But that is the least 
 of their cares. It suffices to outline them,. To lead 
 them to a point where they will allow them to do, is to 
 praise pure doctrine but little — they must deny that of 
 their neighbors. The most active commercial opposi- 
 tion has invented nothing that has not been surpassed 
 by these parties, to blacken and diminish each other. 
 Three accidents, to-day, are to be feared; and, not to 
 be too much surprised, each one should expect them : 
 to be photographed unknown to oneself, and in the 
 most singular attitudes ; to be crushed by an automov 
 bile ; fall into the hands of people who alone are right, 
 alone have invented powder, alone love their country, 
 alone know and unveil the mysteries of the universe and 
 the plans of God. The human soul is the temple, and 
 they alone have the sale of it. They have transformed 
 it into a stock exchange, where each one cries his stocks 
 to the end that he may lower those of his opponent. I 
 detest them. I fly from them. A pestiferous rat is 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. g3 
 
 less horrible to me than these men of obstinate ideas, 
 these incorrigibles of the divine. 
 
 But this is stopping too long before irritating abuses. 
 Let us pass into an evil more subtle, but more perfidi- 
 ous. I wish to speak of the engrossment of the in- 
 terior world by ready-made opinions, being installed 
 almost everywhere. Have you ever had the pleasure 
 of treading over snow virgin of every human step? 
 That is a thing not easy to procure in this horribly 
 trodden world of thought. Men have devised the map 
 of the infinite, and put their signs, driven their stakes, 
 set their tickets thereon. One cannot walk there with- 
 out meeting a cicerone offering you his arm, or a pre- 
 decessor publishing his pretension of receiving you. 
 This monopoly of the world by closed systems resem- 
 bles certain places where all is in gardens, and where 
 the walls between which you walk hinder your view. 
 The worst is that these pretended masters of the uni- 
 verse are only masters in partibus. That which they 
 call the world is but painted canvas, masking the real 
 truth from us. They hinder us from thinking, seeing, 
 searching for ourselves. 
 
 They make us live in an artificial creation, and steri- 
 lize the mind. I pity the man who is embarrassed in 
 the thoughts of another, poor fly entangled in a spider's 
 web. I pity the unhappy one who cannot think with- 
 out slipping in the rut of a remembrance, nor seek to 
 express an idea without falling into a reminiscence. 
 
(34, THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 Now, this man is the actual civilized one. His mind 
 disappears under the impressions of the mind of an- 
 other, like the skin of a Kanaka under his tattooings. 
 
 The greater part of us have no idea of the unhappi- 
 ness that has come to them ; they show it as the equal 
 of a distinction. And, above all, they take their pre- 
 cautions to the end that their children shall be victims 
 of it in their turn. 
 
 Our education is a conspiracy against originality, a 
 vast plot against the danger of thinking for themselves. 
 To kill their curiosity under a mass of teachings al- 
 ready made — to occupy every minute of time so that 
 there can nothing of his personality enter in it, that 
 is the principle. 
 
 If a fissure is found, if the programme is not her- 
 metically sealed, stop the crevice with lessons carefully 
 arranged, obligatory distractions of the conventional, 
 and in sum, of the borrowed. 
 
 The social misfortune which we fear the most, in 
 point of view of the children, is that they are driven 
 by events, out of the organized society and its shelter, 
 to live the life of vagabonds. But what is this disaster 
 in comparison with that which menaces the man who 
 has chosen his way outside of the beaten roads? He 
 is, in the eyes of the bourgeois-minded, a vagabond 
 without fire or home, and, what is worse, he is sus- 
 pected to have fabricated his papers himself. 
 
 When I think of all these things a great homesick- 
 ness comes over me for a new world, intact with un- 
 explored paths, where the soul, alone with this great 
 mystery, will never be troubled by the offer of an in- 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. (55 
 
 terpreter. I dream of the gospels where no commenta- 
 tor has left the print of his fingers, of springs yet hid- 
 den, of marvels not catalogued. 
 
 But who knows? In that beautiful solitude would 
 I not soon regret my fellow-beings and the comforting 
 warmth of their contact? 
 
 The horror of the unknown world would take posses- 
 sion of my soul, and, doubtless, on my return from that 
 distant and perilous pilgrimage, as one salutes from 
 afar the smoke from the paternal roof, which, however, 
 would greatly discommode us in the room, I would 
 salute, as a happy augury, the first poster, and I should 
 embrace, like a brother, the first camlet I met. 
 
 FLIES. 
 
 We could get along without them. But their de- 
 termination to live is very positive. They lay legions 
 of eggs, a gage for the future. It is impossible to 
 hope for their destruction, we will have them always. 
 Their ancestors buzzed about the earth before man ap- 
 peared, and over the remains of our race, when it shall 
 have disappeared, their descendants will dodge about 
 in the sunshine. 
 
 While waiting we are at liberty to think what we 
 would of them, and to say it publicly. 
 
 You will scarcely believe me, regarding this irritat- 
 
66 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 ing subject, if I promise to say nothing but good of 
 these six-footed ladies. What would it be if the little 
 beasts were to take the pen — if horses, cattle, all these 
 martyrs, bitten, depleted, bruised and beaten, could give 
 expression to their feelings when the ardent dog-star 
 delivers them to that cloud of butchers? 
 
 I have reason to suppose that in the flies' camp they 
 have a slight idea of my intentions. An incredible in- 
 stinct distinguishes all the whole plague of them. We 
 do not say, without some reason, "A smart fly." Ever 
 since my arrival in this forest of fir trees, where I pro- 
 pose to treat them according to their deserts, innumer- 
 able swarms buzz around me. 
 
 Gad-flies with empty suckers, terror of beasts of bur- 
 den — and who take me for a ruminant — are here. 
 Mosquitoes, slender, and delicate of taste for human 
 blood. Big black flies, pest of cheeses and butchers, 
 hideous mothers of the horrible maggot. These are 
 the vile creatures, always drunken with rottenness, who 
 take upon themselves the duty of inoculating us with 
 carbuncles, and to carry complacently any quantity of 
 contagion. 
 
 Then there is the ordinary house-fly, those of res- 
 taurants, of kitchens, of soups, having for their tomb 
 a plate of honey or a cup of milk. Let him, who never 
 served as the sarcophagus of a fly lift his hand. Much 
 may be pardoned this fly, for it does not bite, and 
 amuses the scholar in his class, and the prisoner in his 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. @7 
 
 cell. It is much better than you, meadow-fly, little 
 hypocrite, with your azure wings, with all the color of 
 the rainbow in your eyes, but with a sharp sting — 
 pretty as a coliber, wicked as the itch. 
 
 It is not enough that all that list of vermin surround 
 me. Imperceptible gnats also make a part of that 
 manifest conspiracy. Flying in insupportable swarms, 
 they do not realize anything of my discomfort, that is 
 plain. 
 
 I am their thing. When it pleases them my nos- 
 trils serve them as a promenade, my ears their orches- 
 tral hall, and my eyes their bath. 
 
 Swarming race of flies, who shall ever number you, 
 unless he has first counted the stars of heaven and the 
 sands of the sea? Is there a number large enough to 
 hold all your kinds and tribes ? No ; that would be to 
 push impertinence to its fullest measure. Who would 
 dare to ask a man this question, "What fly is biting 
 you ?" Can one know, among so many evil-doing in- 
 sects, which one has chosen you for victim? 
 
 I understand that by a sort of respect to the Divine 
 Goodness antiquity hesitated to attribute to Him the 
 creation of flies, and they preferred to charge a certain 
 evil genius, called Beelzebub, with having made them, 
 and they called him the god of flies. What a proof 
 of universal execration ! And how the flies try to make 
 themselves worthy ! I see them at work now, at this 
 hour, where I am the point of attack of their concen- 
 trated resentment. They have sworn, in lifting their 
 unclean feet, that I shall not finish this article, where 
 the honor of the corporation is attacked; and it will 
 
68 THE VOICE OP NATURE. 
 
 not be their fault if the oath remains vain. Oh, what 
 an infernal collaboration, in this assault of all against 
 one! 
 
 One drinks my ink; the other runs over my paper, 
 with the air of a furious young lady, making gestures 
 of scorn at my prose. Many grubbing in my thick 
 hair make me feel horrible sensations, as though it 
 stood on end, while still others tickle the back of my 
 neck, trot around on my cuffs, or drink from my 
 lachrymal glands, or gorge themselves with my blood. 
 
 But they will not have the last word. Let us light 
 a cigarette, burn some fir-cones. Smoke is good for 
 something. Back, children of Beelzebub ! 
 
 We must admit that a fly is obstinate. They accuse 
 it of being more than obstinate. Permit me — I shall 
 not allow that assertion to go unchallenged. The don- 
 key uses his legitimate right of defence. Poor burro, 
 which everyone joins in abusing, you have finished by 
 putting on a cuirass of inertia ! Under the cries, you 
 are deaf; under blows, you pretend to be dead. Does 
 the stoic not use the same arms when he opposes an 
 impassible brow to attempts of fate ? Less stupid than 
 those who beat you, you prove, in imitating the great 
 souls of other days, that your gray hide is equal to 
 their white woolen togas. So have they not also im- 
 mortalized you, in tracing their best thoughts on the 
 parchment that you give them as a legacy? You give 
 service by where you have suffered; the stylet of the 
 sage revenges you on the clubs of fools. 
 
THE VOICE OP NATURE. (59 
 
 Who, then, would compare you with the flies? By 
 what measure of inaptness could they put on the same 
 line your patience in suffering, and his aggressive ob- 
 stinacy, as obstinate as absurd? You do not besiege 
 doors closed against you. Your dignity refuses to 
 allow you to return to the place from whose threshold 
 you were turned away. You go on your road, molest- 
 ing no one, asking nothing in this world but peace. 
 The fly, on the contrary, troubles that of everyone. 
 It suffices to drive it away for it to return livelier than 
 ever. His joy is to install himself there where his 
 presence will most annoy you. Look at that sleeping 
 baby, where it wishes to possess the rosy mouth where 
 a drop of milk lies ; that poor sick one, just asleep to- 
 ward the morning ! You drive it away from their beds, 
 the importunate creature, ten times, a hundred times. 
 It does not tire. Unless you kill it you will not con- 
 quer, and you would have no right to do that. And 
 when at last you do stretch him out, dead, ten more 
 come to the funeral. 
 
 Flies would try the patience of angels, if there were 
 flies in the kingdom of heaven. While waiting, she 
 stings the austere magistrate, whose bald cranium 
 serves him as a looking-glass, and as the binocle of 
 Belvedere. It unnerves the orator, whose face it fur- 
 rows, in more senses than one, at the very moment 
 when he is trying hard to retain the attention of a 
 sleepy audience, himself occupied to defend himself 
 from the flies, or to follow their capricious flight with 
 his eyes. 
 
 And who, then, can equal them in impudence? Have 
 
70 THB VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 they ever respected anyone or anything? Where is 
 the painting, the statue, the vase that is held a sacred 
 treasure, human majesty, or the painful wound that 
 is safe from their indiscreet attacks? 
 
 The fly has his entry everywhere. It is the symbol 
 of certain men, without tact or respect, who make a 
 business of touching everything, and install themselves 
 in every subject, like a fly on one's nose. 
 
 And yet, when they fall in the water or in my coffee, 
 I take them out, and amuse myself in seeing them dry 
 their wings in the sun, to dart away, happy to be alive. 
 
 And I look upon them almost like innocent victims 
 of dark machinations, when the perfidious spider's web 
 catches them in flight. Oh ! when they struggle in the 
 cords of the web, where their feet and wings are suc- 
 cessively entangled, and the monster is coming to 
 drink them alive, I can hold back no longer. I break 
 their meshes and set them free. And for a minute, 
 while they are cleaning themselves before my eyes, ad- 
 justing their wings, brushing their corselets, I forget 
 all their mischievous tricks. I see in them but a poor 
 captive creature regaining its liberty. Admiring the 
 lightness of its movements, the marvelous neatness of 
 that toilette, the wonderful structure of its large 
 faceted eyes, it is not to Beelzebub that my thoughts 
 mount. I say to myself that each of these insects is a 
 tissue of marvels, and I remain dreamy. 
 
 There must be behind this world's visible veil an in- 
 finite wealth of wisdom hidden. Here is an ephemeral 
 being, useless and annoying in our eyes. And yet there 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 7j_ 
 
 is gathered in his structure a genius so great, that all 
 men, reunited, could not create anything like it, or 
 even come to understand it. 
 
 SMALL PEOPLE— GREAT EXAMPLES. 
 
 Example is not like a copy-book which we are ex- 
 pected to imitate, abandoning us to our own proper 
 resources. It is a force which goes from man to man, 
 a sort of contagion for good or evil. In that consists 
 precisely its prodigious influence. But a man may 
 take a contagious disease by the illness o<f a child or an 
 animal, and in this case the little and inferior acts on 
 the grand and superior. The contagion of example, 
 that, too, does not necessarily come from those who 
 think themselves at the summit. It may come from 
 those who, by a superficial and impertinent convention- 
 ality, it has become common to call the lower classes. 
 
 If the heroes and saints, the thinkers and savants, 
 have their parts in the direction of the affairs of the 
 world, the humble and unknown have theirs also. And 
 many times these illustrious geniuses and the vene- 
 rated benefactors of humanity have gone to seek their 
 inspirations and their thoughts near to the small ones 
 of the world. The small have need of the great; the 
 great cannot get along without the small. I am in- 
 finitely touched by the lessons that God gives us by 
 those masters without orders, those professors without 
 diplomas, the unknown passers-by. Among others, I 
 know two little rag-pickers, who have taught me great 
 
72 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 things without ever having spoken to me, nor perhaps 
 ever seeing me. I have often met these two compan- 
 ions, in the cold mists of morning, at the hour when 
 men and things have such a mournful aspect that one 
 hesitates to take up one's daily task, and when the 
 moral spring seems stiffened and rusty, like the ten- 
 dons of a foundered horse. They were already re- 
 turning from their work, toward eight o'clock; that 
 is to say, in December, just at daybreak, just when 
 many others, even among the laborers, scarcely had 
 begun their day's toil. Hitched to their cart, which 
 they drew with a light step, they mounted toward their 
 faubourg, rich with their early findings — papers, rags, 
 bones, corks, sardine boxes and old hats. To see them 
 pass thus, I do not know what helpful breath of cour- 
 age blows over me, penetrates me, and has more effect 
 on me than all the exhortations of moralist or philoso- 
 pher. Had they not shaken off their desire for sleep, 
 and taken up their harness again at four o'clock in the 
 morning? Did they not do this every day, and in all 
 kinds of weather? And why? To go and gather a 
 few scraps of household leavings, or those of factories, 
 tatters of papers or stuffs. 
 
 If such obscure rag-pickers, scarcely more than 
 children yet, could find in themselves such an energy 
 for such a labor, what energy should I not show in has- 
 tening to my labor — I, whose function it is to lift the 
 fallen, and to gather up those who are being lost in 
 human society ! That which I go to seek in the night 
 and in the cross-roads and by-paths of life — I, rag- 
 picker for God — are human souls, rejected, like debris ; 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 73 
 
 and the Master., to whom I bring my findings, is the 
 merciful Father, before whom there is joy over the re- 
 pentant sinner — the afflicted one consoled and the mis- 
 erable comforted. Since they have suggested these 
 reflections to me, brought this encouragement, I never 
 see them pass, these young toilers, without emotion. 
 But they gave me, the other day, a pleasure altogether 
 particular and like a feast for the soul. It was Ash 
 Wednesday. On that day, as after all great holidays, 
 there is much to glean in the streets. I saw them, 
 therefore, return loaded with packages, sacks full, 
 where overflowed or hid the curious merchandise of a 
 carnival. But in the middle of the cart, buried in the 
 bundles up to her chest, there was seated an old wom- 
 an. My little rag-pickers, with the aim of doing more 
 work that morning, had brought their old mother with 
 them. She had lent them her hand, and in return they 
 were giving her a ride home in a carriage. 
 
 The young folks' faces told that they were happy to 
 give her a ride and save her old legs. The mother's 
 face shone with pride to have children like these, as 
 good as they were strong. And I found such examples 
 all the greater, because they who set them were among 
 the smallest. 
 
 WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING AT? 
 
 On the quay of Bethune, a group of curious persons 
 are posted, immovable, with their eyes fixed toward the 
 South, 
 
74 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 From time to time, one would detach himself from 
 the group, and go away, shrugging his shoulders, with 
 an air as if he would say, "Bunch of fools." But others 
 approached, lifting their heads and looking toward the 
 same point of the sky as those ahead of them. 
 
 What can they see at that side? That is what I 
 asked myself. 
 
 He who has never idled, himself, nor has seen block- 
 heads stopped before no matter what, will be surprised 
 at my question. 
 
 The best way to obtain an answer is to go and see. 
 I go there, then. Like the others, I lifted my head and 
 let my eyes wander around the sky between the dome 
 of the Pantheon and that of the Salpetriere. But how- 
 ever hard or whichever way I looked, I saw nothing, 
 absolutely nothing. 
 
 I questioned the companions who were around me, 
 with wide-open eyes : 
 
 "Why are you here, and what do you see?" 
 
 "We came because we saw others looking. We are 
 doing the same, but have seen nothing." 
 
 I made the tour of the assemblage with my ques- 
 tions. No one had seen anything. Strange, strange! 
 
 After several minutes of sustained and fruitless 
 watching, I, in turn, withdrew from the crowd, to 
 which new recruits ceaselessly joined. But I was greatly 
 puzzled to find the primary cause of all that attention. 
 
 These people, I said to myself, are not crazy, for I 
 am not crazy myself; and yet I, like them, looked an 
 instant, without seeing anything, or knowing why I 
 looked. 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 75 
 
 Had we all been the victim of a joke ? Those things 
 happen. It would not be the first time that a wicked 
 joker had taken advantage of the ingenuousness of 
 the public. 
 
 One man stops in the busy streets and, apparently 
 without motive, pretends to look at one place. A 
 circle of spectators gather quickly around him. But 
 he must be clever to fool the public thus. Generally 
 he does not allow himself to be caught, and if he does 
 get caught, he finds it out quickly. I do not know 
 what there was serious and persevering in the phe- 
 nomenon that made me think it had some authentic 
 cause. Not one of the group of idlers in this crowd 
 having been able to give me an explanation, I deter- 
 mined to address myself to the inhabitants of the quay. 
 After a series of unfortunate attempts, I saw a fish- 
 seller under the arch of a door, who recompensed my 
 zeal. 
 
 "Why are they there, my good sir?" 
 
 "I will tell you. About an hour ago a balloon dis- 
 appeared in that direction, and ever since there is a 
 crowd to look." 
 
 I was at last satisfied. A fact had passed in that 
 place. A balloon had appeared to the sight of these 
 people, then had sailed away toward the south. Once 
 the real ocular witnesses of this had gone, those who 
 followed them continued to look in imitation, but with- 
 out knowing what it was all about. 
 
 How many analogous phenomena in the history of 
 men! Never make fun of those who stand there, the 
 eyes lost in some corner of the sky, where you see noth- 
 
76 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 ing. Above all, do not believe in an imposture lightly. 
 Since the attention of humanity is obstinately fixed on 
 some point, be sure that something real and great has 
 passed that way. With a little patience and serious 
 thought you can convince yourself of it. 
 
 ON THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS. 
 
 With hurried steps, a commissionaire hastened 
 away, carrying, pell-mell, gathered between his arms, 
 hung over his shoulders, a half dozen baskets of flow- 
 ers, jardinieres full, and all lamentably faded. 
 
 On the naked carcases of the great willow arches, the 
 bows of ribbon hung, giving the effect of laces on skele- 
 tons. The opulent flowering of these overflowing 
 bouquets was reduced to a few blades, where the dead 
 leaves and the corollaries of a dirty yellow trembled. 
 Of the uncrowned daisies there remained but the hard 
 hearts; the roses, after the fall of their petals, were 
 nothing but frightful buds on their thorny stems. Two 
 lilies, graceful still, bent their heads sadly, seeming to 
 weep over all this desolation. The man, dragging his 
 load, seized them brutally, like something entirely 
 valueless and of which he must get rid. 
 
 But, on the passage of these flowers, it was curious 
 to observe the faces of the observers. They stopped, 
 turned, following him with their regard, as they follow 
 
THE VOICE OP NATURE. <JJ 
 
 funeral processions. A respectful pity betrayed itself 
 in their eyes and in the attitudes of the most of them, 
 and their thoughts could be imagined : "Poor flow- 
 ers, withered and dead; and how that clown shakes 
 them, and carries them ungallantly to their grave." 
 Some, rare, though, shrugged their shoulders, as do 
 certain people seeing an infirm person pass by. 
 Thoughtless gamins made comical gestures. A fat 
 coachman, camped like a bronze statue on the edge of 
 the sidewalk, turned his face, so jolly and rosy, on 
 these remains — more rosy and flourishing in contrast 
 to so much withered slenderness. It appeared to give 
 him something to reflect upon. 
 
 Altogether, these flowers made a picture and created 
 a sensation. Poor debris of some fete, a birthday, a 
 betrothal, they awoke the idea of our fragile lives, ex- 
 citing, above all, tenderness and compassion. It is 
 worth the trouble to compare the departure of the 
 flowers with their arrival. When they come, fresh and 
 bright, like pretty young girls dressed for a ball, those 
 who bring them are in their glory. Proud of their load 
 and the admiration which it excites, they have the air 
 of carrying a holy sacrament. On their road children's 
 hands are extended : "Oh, what beautiful flowers ; give 
 me one !" Women open their eyes and dream of the 
 happy mortal toward whom these flowering homages 
 are sent. It is a continual rumor of voices, of exclama- 
 tions and remarks. And these remarks are not al- 
 ways kindly ; above all, if the baskets are rich and the 
 bouquets extra fine. Their luxury then awakens envy : 
 "What luck to be able to afford such beautiful things." 
 
?§ THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 The positive people are set on edge: "They must be 
 stupid to spend so much money on such follies." 
 Others, and not always wrongly, murmur: "Ah, 
 these well-fed and selfish bourgeois ; they allow them- 
 selves such fancies, while the poor are starving." 
 
 So the least pretext suffices to reveal the hearts of 
 men, and to drive each one to manifest what is in him. 
 It is not needed that an illustrious citizen should be 
 buried, or that one of the great people of the earth 
 should pass with his funeral escort. A flower brought 
 or taken away suffices, and the eternal question of our 
 destiny, the passions of the day, the holy pities, like the 
 great angers and the base jealousies, are there, all 
 ready to agitate themselves on its passage. 
 
 AN ACT OF JUSTICE. 
 
 The slowness of justice causes the despair of up- 
 right consciences, eager for clear situations and equita- 
 ble retributions. But when, by exception, the chastise- 
 ment follows the crime, striking just, and striking 
 quick, it is a comfort and a satisfaction. With the 
 aim of procuring for himself these comforting impres- 
 sions, it is not rare that man intervenes in the causes. 
 He hastens the solutions, precipitates the denouements, 
 realizes summary justice, little allied to justice of the 
 law. I have just now found another example in anima 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 79 
 
 vili. One can say that doubly, since it relates to an old 
 horse on the way to the slaughter-house. 
 
 We are, one Wednesday afternoon, at the Boule- 
 vard of the Hospital. On the dome of the Salpetriere 
 the clock marks three. It is the hour when the horse 
 market, established in this neighborhood, was about 
 to close. By the gate of the immense grounds the 
 horses came out, horses of all sizes and values. Hand- 
 some teams, with glistening hair, and heads held high 
 in air. Big Percherons, with heavy, measured steps, 
 able to draw a truck or a tumbril, and ponies, the de- 
 light of childhood. The higher the price of the horse, 
 the better he is cared for, and the cleaner and more 
 careful the jockey. His cares, also, are measured by 
 the value of the merchandise. 
 
 But now come the poor old horses. In their turn 
 they come from the market. But, instead of going to- 
 ward the city like the others, they turn to the right, 
 and begin to mount the steep side of the Boulevard. 
 
 The temporary grooms led them. It was the last 
 lap. Above they will make a half turn, and they will 
 enter the slaughter-house. 
 
 This defile of poor limping hacks on the way to their 
 death was a melancholy sight. Their thin skins were 
 pierced by many holes, and scarcely hid the bones. 
 Their legs were knotty and twisted, like the roots of 
 an oak. As payment for their existence of labor they 
 are to receive a thrust of a knife. Poor old carcans, 
 I follow, with my eyes, along the Calvary that you are 
 climbing, and I see your cruppers bend beneath their 
 load. Without doubt you bear your part of inevitable 
 
gQ THE VOICE OP NATURE. 
 
 pains ; but how much they are aggravated by the ini- 
 quity of men! So it is not rare to see this supreme 
 voyage accompanied by blows of a cudgeL There is 
 no need of being kind to this equine clientele. They 
 could bang on them with impunity. 
 
 We were there, standing on the sidewalk, watching 
 this lamentable cortege pass, when a revolting scene 
 took place. 
 
 A young groom, finding that his horse did not go 
 fast enough, began to beat him furiously. He beat him 
 over the head, his eyes and nose, all the time holding 
 the horse by the bridle. When his arms tired he be- 
 gan a series of kicks in the stomach and flanks. The 
 poor horse, completely crazed, tried to rear and fell on 
 the pavement. The spectators were indignant. One 
 workman stepped out from the group and began to 
 make observations to the wretch, who did not receive 
 them well. The affair grew warm. Soon we saw the 
 fist of the workman lift and give the groom a majestic 
 blow. 
 
 From the sidewalk a bravo saluted the avenger. 
 But that made the avenger lose his measure. En- 
 couraged by the consent of the gallery, he fell upon 
 his antagonist with his fists. A guardian of the peace 
 intervened, and took both men to the station-house. 
 The avenger made me a sign to follow, and I did. As 
 a witness before the commissioner, I gave an impartial 
 account of the affair. I learned afterward that the 
 case was dismissed. 
 
 But things followed it. For the groom there was 
 a very black eye, and for you, readers, this story. 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. gl 
 
 This trouble was caused by the role of instant justice. 
 There is no grander one, but it is terribly difficult. 
 
 When the first avenging blow fell upon the head of 
 this wretch, enraged against this poor dying brute, 
 it was like a flash of lightning of manifest justice. The 
 cry of approbation which it drew from us was legiti- 
 mate. And yet this cry had brought such an excess 
 in the repression, that the victim of it became almost 
 interesting, and the avenger appeared to be the human 
 brute. We had awakened this brute by our applause. 
 The intention was just, the result awful. A fate com- 
 mon enough of human actions. And before the ques- 
 tion, whether to let them continue, or intervene, in 
 such a case, we would remain in a terrible indecision, if 
 we have not the inward light for guide. It is for that 
 to teach us. It will say : " When you abstain, distrust 
 your softness ; if you interfere, it is of your ardor that 
 you must be on your guard." 
 
 A CAT IN THE WATER. 
 
 Two hundred persons were leaning on their elbows 
 against the parapets of the little branch of the Seine, 
 running between Notre Dame de Paris and the re- 
 mains of the old Hotel Dieu. New curiosity seekers 
 gathered incessantly. They raised themselves on their 
 toes and looked over the shoulders of the earlier ar- 
 
82 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 rivals. To see them from afar, they seemed like peo- 
 ple completely fascinated by a powerful drama — a 
 suicide, perhaps,. or a stirring rescue. 
 
 Not to lose anything of such a spectacle, passengers 
 got down from omnibuses, and the small merchants 
 quitted their booths and crossed the quay. 
 
 Now, what was happening? A cat in the water. 
 Yes, a gray and white kitten, and about half grown. 
 The poor little thing had a string around its neck. 
 But the stone, which doubtless had been fastened to it, 
 had become loosened, and the animal, emerging from 
 the bottom, a part of whose viscous mud was to be 
 seen on its face, swam, struggled and tried to escape 
 the waters. 
 
 By great misfortune there are high walls all along 
 the banks, worn smooth by the water, and offering no 
 foothold, even for the paws of a cat. When it had 
 vainly sought, on one side of the banks, a place where 
 he could hoist himself out of the water, the swimmer, 
 at bay, turned to the other side, painfully traversed the 
 canal, and at the end of these infructuous efforts en- 
 countered the same obstacles. 
 
 Now he catches on some small projection of the stone 
 and succeeds in pulling himself up half out of the 
 water. But he cannot maintain himself there, and at 
 the end of a minute he has fallen back, entirely sub- 
 merged. 
 
 Returning to the surface, he recommenced his strug- 
 gle, but with a slower movement. From time to time 
 he gave a pitiful little cry, that we saw more than 
 heard, lifting supplicating eyes toward the spectators 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. gg 
 
 above. They, more and more captivated as the scene 
 was prolonged, took the part of the dying creature, 
 which defended itself with such an obstinate hope. 
 When it seemed to reanimate itself, a murmur of satis- 
 faction traversed the gallery; if it appeared weaker, 
 there was a mournful silence. Each one, in reality, 
 seemed to have, in a measure, identified himself with 
 the fate of this life in distress, whose safety or de- 
 struction would be for all a good or bad omen. 
 
 Suddenly, a- young boy appeared, one of those whom 
 we meet everywhere where there is anything going 
 on. Scarcely had he understood what it was all about, 
 than four by four he bounded down the steps toward 
 the landing. By a prodigy of cleverness he managed 
 to let himself down within a short distance of the 
 water by means of one of those large iron rings where 
 the boats tie up. He held to this by one leg, and 
 balancing out into the empty air, he threw to the little 
 swimmer the end of his woolen scarf. 
 
 The cat, on the point of going down forever, gath- 
 ered its last strength and caught its claws in the sav- 
 ing scarf. In an instant, like a fish on a hook, he was 
 thrown up on the bank, where the boy rejoined him in 
 a moment. 
 
 Then a thunder of bravos burst out all along the 
 parapet, and the lad, red with emotion, ran away with 
 the conquest he had made from death itself in his arms. 
 
 O, mysterious power of life ! We may disown you, 
 and walk with a brutal step on your marvels. We even 
 may, when delivered over to perverse impulses, find a 
 pleasure, at certain moments, in destruction; but an 
 
84 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 hour comes when, by that very thing that the drama 
 of life and death unfolds, poignant, before us, it is for 
 life that we wish evil to all its enemies. A busy crowd 
 suspends its action, misses appointments, neglects its 
 business, and becomes enthusiastic in favor of a cat 
 that does not wish to die. And the mocking boy, who 
 usually breaks windows, torments animals and laughs 
 at the authorities, becomes the savior of the creature, 
 at the risk of his own life. 
 
 Let us recognize in this the influence of the Sove- 
 reign Will, having willed that life should be sacred 
 to all creatures, and which manifests in the best of 
 men the sublime instinct of self-devotion, and in try- 
 ing to save that which is lost. 
 
 THOSE TO WHOM WE LISTEN. 
 
 In class, it is the masters who instruct the children. 
 Between the classes life offers them lessons. There 
 are anonymous and impersonal ones. All the views 
 of fields and woods speak to the child. 
 
 But it happens, also, that there are on the road of 
 the scholar escaped from school, real teachers, whose 
 intervention sometimes marks a life. The more popu- 
 lous the centers, the more numerous are these teachers. 
 It is difficult to escape them, and they are far from 
 being of the best quality. 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 85 
 
 I have just seen a lesson of this kind, which bore its 
 fruit on the spot. You shall see how. 
 
 It is Thursday. On the edge of the quay Henri IV., 
 the whole length of a port encumbered with boats, a 
 troop of scholars are amusing themselves among the 
 merchandise being discharged. They hustled each 
 other on the planks, climbed mountains of bundles to 
 let themselves come rolling down like casks. They 
 halloed into the bungholes of empty hogsheads to hear 
 the echo. Some of them tried to read the tickets on 
 the different cases whose contents puzzled them. In 
 passing they teased horses or donkeys, played tricks on 
 the boatmen, or jumped into the small boats which 
 balance behind the pinnaces. From time to time, a 
 Custom House employe appears. Then the boys dis- 
 appear like rabbits in their burrows. But as soon as 
 he is gone they reappear, finding their heart's delight 
 in touching everything, annoying everybody, until 
 some stevedore, black with coal dust, apostrophizes 
 themiin his hoarse voice with a club in his hand. The 
 boys disappear again like sparrows. A minute later 
 they are elsewhere, always gay, always ready to re- 
 commence their tricks. 
 
 They now pass near a storage place for hogsheads, 
 which were stood closely around the place. There was 
 no etiquette. "What is inside of them ? It cannot be 
 wine. The heads are of white wood. But here is 
 one where the bottom is broken a little. What if we 
 took hold of the stave and pulled a little? Come on, 
 hard. ,, 
 
§(J THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 It cracks under their efforts, and big chunks of resin 
 fall to the ground. 
 
 At the same minute one of the boys takes a large 
 piece and hides it in his blouse. 
 
 ''Leave that!" cry the others. "That does not be- 
 long to you." 
 
 "Bah! they put it on wood. I will melt it and fix 
 kindlings for my mother to light the fire." 
 
 And they start away. A workman has seen them. 
 He stops them, and lays hold of the little delinquent, 
 and says : 
 
 "You will put back what you took, and quick, too." 
 
 The child was about to do so, when a ragged man, 
 one of those who sleep on the bridges and wash their 
 only shirt in the Seine, on bright days, and dry it in 
 the sun, intervened. He understood what had hap- 
 pened. 
 
 "Don't listen to him," he said to the boy, now ready 
 to bring back the resin. "You would be very stupid 
 not to keep it. What we find we keep. There remains 
 enough more." 
 
 Then, turning to the other children, he said to 
 them : 
 
 "Don't hesitate. Why should you? Go ahead. I 
 give you permission, and you, big boobies, you are not 
 going to hinder young folks from amusing themselves." 
 
 Upon that, three-quarters of the boys rolled onto the 
 disemboweled hogshead, filled their pockets and their 
 aprons, and disappeared like a flock of freebooters has- 
 tening to put their booty in a safe place. 
 
 And the tatterdemalion went his way, his hands in 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. §7 
 
 his pockets, with an air of saying, "I have not lost my 
 day." 
 
 We must not take the misdeeds of children too seri- 
 ously. Their natural turbulence draws them on. They 
 are often better than their actions. Still, I went from 
 there, thoughtful, perplexed, having once more learned, 
 in the presence of both good and evil counsel, which are 
 the ones listened to. 
 
 MOVING. 
 
 The October term has passed. One can breathe 
 until January, now. Suppose we talk a little about 
 moving. 
 
 People never moved so much as now. The country 
 moves to town; the town to the country, the beaches 
 and the mountains. 
 
 In our great centers the population is the prey of 
 perpetual motion. On certain days the migration is so 
 great that it impedes circulation. It seems that all the 
 furniture of the inhabitants is in the street. 
 
 Get up a directory with the addresses of people of 
 all situations. At the end of two or three years, if you 
 would keep informed, it would be so full of erasures 
 and additions that you would have to copy it all off. 
 
 Civilians move less often than the military; the 
 bourgeois less often than the laborer. The record of 
 these movings belongs to the functionaries, and among 
 
88 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 them the frequency of the displacements seems to be 
 the cause of the importance of the functions. Across 
 the summits of hierarchy, as on the high mountain 
 ridges, tempests blow, and are perpetual menaces for 
 the great personages. A rural letter-carrier, or a 
 forester, is surer of his to-morrows than a judge or a 
 minister. 
 
 If we are movers, in the proper sense of the word, 
 we are so, still more, in a figurative sense. Here I 
 think, not of our changeable humor, nor that feverish 
 agitation which makes us think sometimes that all the 
 world is crazy — mentality gracefully defined by the in- 
 dulgent euphemism, "he is moving." But I think 
 more of the profound changes which have taken place 
 in our spiritual dwelling. The ancient secular shelter 
 for souls, and the secular shelters of human thought, 
 have undergone such modifications that we do not 
 know them any* more. In spirit, above all, it becomes 
 rare to have a paternal house, to live and die in the 
 ideas and beliefs of one's forefathers. Nothing is any 
 longer in its place. Man has moved his ideas, his 
 mysteries, his dogmas, his heroes, and even his divini- 
 ties. He had loaded his holdings of faith and hope on 
 these provisional vehicles, and he drives all that be- 
 neath the great sky, anxious to find another country. 
 Perhaps humanity has never felt in a more melancholy 
 fashion the truth of these antique words : "We are 
 but pilgrims on this earth ; we have here no permanent 
 city." 
 
 When will it be given us to enter in a hostelry where 
 they lodge more than a night, to raise our tents, to 
 
THE VOICE OP NATURE. §9 
 
 build our house, to repose ourselves at last for a dur- 
 able time in a real country of soul ? God alone knows. 
 But perhaps this time is less distant than we dare 
 suppose. 
 
 While waiting, in the way of moving I saw some- 
 thing most unreasonable. 
 
 On one of the exterior boulevards I saw, riding 
 along, upright, balanced between four wheels of a 
 wagon, a large tree with all its branches. On the tree 
 was a nest, and around this nest two little birds flew, 
 screaming. 
 
 So this nest, symbol of peace and security, this gra- 
 cious image of inviolate hiding-places, is not even shel- 
 tered from movings. They transport it, with the tree 
 where it was hung, with the earth, even, around which 
 the tree had fixed its roots. 
 
 Was not 'that the overflowing of the measure of 
 moving-days ? 
 
 TO BETTER ONESELF. 
 
 What will not one do to better oneself? It is hu- 
 man to aspire to more comfort, and to seek means of 
 ameliorating one's position; and when at times, when 
 things go badly, should we be surprised to hear the 
 cry, "Suppose we change"? The sick one turns in his 
 bed. The tenant, angry with his miserly landlord and 
 irritating concierge, says angrily, "Let us move." 
 
90 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 Tired of being robbed on the shores of the blue sea, 
 the tourist takes refuge in the hotels of Switzerland. 
 
 To better themselves women change servants, and 
 servants change mistresses ; functionaries change their 
 posts; the Chambers, the ministry; the electors, the 
 deputy ; the people, the government. 
 
 Are they really any better after it all? Will they 
 not find the same old inconveniences under a new 
 form ? It is possible. But they will have had the hope 
 of being better, even if in the end they are worse off. 
 I have seen families leave rue Quincampoix on account 
 of bad air, and install themselves in rue Maubee "to 
 better themselves." It was to change the microbes, 
 and that was all. But I understand these absurd ac- 
 tions, having done the same things myself. I never 
 could resist the desire to change to the other sidewalk 
 when in the mornings the housewives shake the dust 
 out on the passers' heads. But how often, however, 
 while trying to avoid the dust of a rag shaken every 
 day, I went and threw myself beneath a rug that they 
 beat only every six months ! But that does not matter ; 
 I shall change the sidewalk every time. It is a solace to 
 change ; to change occupies one, distracts the mind, and 
 procures for it a little illusion. Is it not at least that 
 much ? 
 
 People change, also, through enervation. As soon as 
 a thing lasts there are some who feel uneasy. That 
 Aristides was called 'The Just" for a time was bearable. 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 91 
 
 But if it continues too long they begin to cry "Enough !" 
 and the story of change is repeated. They calumniate 
 Aristides, they accuse him and they condemn him. 
 Why, then, was he called "The Just"? Is there any- 
 thing so monotonous as length ? What indecency, and 
 impertinence besides, towards those who are not just ! 
 Happiness itself, when it lasts, incites change. A 
 series of uniformly happy days is wearying, do you 
 know? It is comparable to a dead calm. Save your- 
 self from being becalmed. A little storm, if you please. 
 Invent something which will set folks in a fury. We 
 find it irksome here — let us start a revolution. 
 
 For many unhappiness consists in being obliged to 
 remain in one place. They are afraid of taking root. 
 A fever agitates them and drives them from, place to 
 place. They are always buckling their trunks. Thus 
 they can never seem to stop at any definitive determi- 
 nation. To-day a resolution is taken; they burn their 
 vessels. So it is irrevocable. Know your world better. 
 At the precise instant when everything is fully de- 
 cided a change has taken place in their minds. The 
 very fact that they have said ne varietur makes them 
 believe that they have sacrificed their liberty. Here- 
 after they will sigh for other things, such as the for- 
 bidden fruit or the lost paradise. 
 
 But, beneath this perpetual movement, this surface 
 change, one thing germinates, grows and becomes in- 
 destructible, and that is routine. These changeable 
 
92 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 men are the most untractable slaves of habit. The peo- 
 ple of unstable and versatile temperaments are most 
 given to routine. "The more it changes, the more it is 
 the same thing." No proverb is truer than that. The 
 history of nations resembles the oscillations of a swing. 
 It is the perpetual movement, joined to an invariable 
 tick-tack. 
 
 To-day it is the tyranny from above, to-morrow from 
 below. All that is called change, but is not in reality. 
 The wheel turns, but keeps its place. 
 
 The troops of the figurantes in a theatre go out by 
 one door and return by another. The superficial ob- 
 server does not perceive it. He has the illusion of an 
 immense motley crowd, of an inexhaustible multitude. 
 He who knows the lines knows very well that these 
 archers, halberdiers, arquebusiers, cavaliers and tutti 
 quanti have but to change their costumes in the wings. 
 He will tell you, pointing to such or such a one, a valet, 
 that he was a chevalier just now, and -indicating a 
 monk as the brigand of the second act. Alas ! one does 
 not need to be a great physiognomist to recognize in 
 this file of historical characters, under their different 
 costumes, the same individuals, red or white, imperial- 
 ists or Jacobins, planters of the tree of liberty or sinis- 
 ter wood-cutters who cut it down to make wood to 
 warm the feet of Caesars. One does not need to be a 
 great prophet to say, regarding the scene of to-day, 
 what it will be to-morrow, or the day after. It is marked 
 out like music-paper, like the bill of fare of encrusted 
 housekeepers. We are not any further advanced. That 
 is what we should say. Then we would no longer see 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 90 
 
 passionate crowds, nourished with illusions, turning 
 around ceaselessly in the same circuit, drawn by decep- 
 tive promises, and imagining that the earth is going to 
 be transfigured because the comedians have changed 
 their costumes. 
 
 One only change becomes important, that which 
 bears on the inward man. No one wishes to know any- 
 thing of that. And yet it is there that we should begin 
 "to better ourselves." 
 
 WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN. 
 
 It is very grave. It is the question of the existence 
 of several families — of sparrows. 
 
 In the country these birds are considered as enemies, 
 because they love to pick at the ripened wheat-heads. 
 They forget that in the spring they live on cater- 
 pillars and- beetles. In cities there is no harvest to 
 spoil: the sparrow is the friend of everybody. For 
 me, I am grateful that he is there and remains even 
 during the winter. We have, it is true, rooks, pigeons 
 and numbers of blackbirds with yellow beaks. But 
 they are the guests of the public gardens, old towers or 
 some green corner. There are only enough of these 
 for the privileged ones. The sparrow is universal. He 
 inhabits all quarters without distinction. He is found 
 in barracks, in schools, convents and prisons. He sings 
 under the windows of the poor, enlivens the doughty 
 
94 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 heads of schools, and jumps in the fine sand of the 
 private parks of the aristocrats. At the Louvre he 
 nests in the sleeves of the great ones or the casques of 
 the warriors; at Notre Dame, in the beards of the 
 saints. 
 
 He has no haughty pride, nor prejudices, nor vain 
 fears. The shadow pleases him, doubtless, since he 
 lives under the bridges. Sun and heat do not discom- 
 mode him, for the straw of his nest festoons the Eiffel 
 tower. They reproach him and accuse him of having 
 unscrupulously driven the swallows from their nests 
 with his sharp beak. That is true and is deplorable. 
 It is to be regretted that the sparrow is something of a 
 brigand. « But, without doubt, that is the fault of a few 
 individuals. It would be unjust to accuse the whole 
 race. Are there not bad and good people everywhere ? 
 Even among the kings of the earth ? And I continue 
 to love the sparrows for their courage, their humor for 
 unravelling things, their communicative optimism. 
 
 Judge whether I can remain uninterested in their 
 fate or remain indifferent to that which threatens them. 
 Now I see sinister events foreshadowed without power 
 to check them nor to notify those most interested. 
 
 There against my house misery is organizing. Fatal- 
 ity is on the march. Between two high buildings there 
 is a vacant lot, having, however, an old coach house 
 thereon. From the first floor upward the cracked 
 gables here and there offered commodious lodgings for 
 the sparrows. A whole republic was installed there. 
 From early morning to sunset the air vibrated with 
 their happy cries. The little ones squealed in the holes 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 95 
 
 and the old ones fought on the roofs. They never 
 stopped bringing from everywhere straws, feathers, 
 hairs to build their nests and food to appease the 
 hunger of their little ones. They lived, prospered and 
 furnished a warm picture of the joy of living. 
 
 And to say that all that is to end badly ! 
 
 My neighbor, the grocer, has torn down the old out- 
 buildings, and put the ground in the charge of a lot of 
 demolishers. A large house is to be built there as high 
 as its two neighbors. The picks work furiously, the 
 wagons are filled rapidly, the horses pull, and the cart- 
 men swear and snap their whips. Soon the cellar will 
 be dug. Then the masons will come. Walls will rise 
 from the ground, grow high and wide. And the spar- 
 rows, what will become of them? What will become 
 of the little ones without feathers or wings? The 
 stones and mortar will cover all the holes. Enmured 
 alive, legions of poor little birds will be asphyxiated, or 
 die of hunger, and the old ones, after a few cries of dis- 
 tress, a few anxious turns around the old nests, will 
 disperse to the four corners of the city. 
 
 I see these things coming. And, while this night- 
 mare possesses me, the sparrows continue to fly about 
 and sing. Nothing seems to tell them. What do they 
 care for the men tearing down the sheds by the coach 
 house, covered with mud and digging that great hole, 
 the horses urged along, all that passes down there on 
 the surface of the earth? Are they not in the sun, on 
 the roofs, in the serenity of the high regions, with 
 wings to escape with ? 
 
 This contrast hurts me: this carelessness of press- 
 
96 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 ing danger, this overflowing life, and down there the 
 inexorable fatality which is approaching to crush them. 
 All that about the city of the birds made me think of 
 that of men. I think of unexpected events which come 
 to us here below, to those which are maturing here 
 under our very eyes and which we do not see. I 
 think of Cassandra, of believers whom the light of pre- 
 sentiment tortures, without their being able to find be- 
 lievers, at a very distant horizon charged with sombre 
 storms. 
 
 But perhaps I see things too darkly ; above all, in the 
 present case. If my grocer is not in too much of a 
 hurry, if the contractor drags his work a little, if bad 
 weather interferes and the building progresses slowly, 
 the wings of my baby birds will have had time to grow. 
 Frightened by the cries of the masons and the strange 
 appearance of the scaffolding, they will hasten to emi- 
 grate, and their carelessness will be nearer right than 
 my anxiety. I would gladly be deceived. 
 
 THE TERRACE BUILDER'S BREAKFAST. 
 
 At the noon hour I like to watch the workmen eat in 
 front of the restaurants. The simplest offer the great- 
 est interest. Particularly touching are those little bits 
 
THE VOICE OP NATURE. 97 
 
 of barracks where they sell soup for two sous. Well 
 made, this is a feast. Served in always very clean 
 bowls, it is eaten in the open air, on a small bench, or 
 standing if that is full. When I see the worker thus 
 taking his modest repast I make in silence all sorts of 
 good wishes, to the end that that may be to his benefit, 
 and the prayer of Christ rings in my memory, "Give 
 us this day our daily bread." 
 
 But infinitely more curious is it to observe the hus- 
 band's meal brought by his wife, and eaten together on 
 some improvised seat, or some bench by the road. The 
 omnibus drivers, masons, terrace builders and pavers 
 are the ones who make this meal together. 
 
 By the manner in which these couples eat their soup 
 together I can perceive more or less of the tenderness 
 or indifference of their union. 
 
 From my window, for several days now, exactly at 
 eleven o'clock in the morning, I see a young woman 
 come, very neatly dressed, and with a gentle and pleas- 
 ant face. She brings her husband his noon-day break- 
 fast, a worker on the terrace. As soon as she arrives, 
 he comes out of the cellar which he is digging with 
 some twenty others. He wipes his forehead and then 
 they sit down beside each other, with one only napkin 
 for both. It is also a tablecloth, and their knees serve 
 for a table. The service consists of two blue bowls and 
 two plates. The young couple have good appetites. 
 But the woman interrupts her dinner to watch her hus- 
 band eat. One can see that she is happy to see him 
 restore his strength thus, and to know that the repast 
 pleases him. And he from time to time gives her a 
 
98 THE VOICE OP NATURE. 
 
 glance as though to thank her for the care she has 
 taken of his comfort. In one corner of the little basket 
 is hidden a surprise opened for the dessert only. When 
 they have finished they talk of their affairs. Some- 
 times this appears to be grave, and at other times gay, 
 for I see them laugh from my balcony. But the hour 
 for work rings, the man takes up his pick again, and 
 the woman takes her way home, but before she goes 
 they embrace. 
 
 The sight of this peaceful repast charms me. I could 
 look at them thus without ever growing weary. Othess 
 also look at them, the bourgeois who pass by. How 
 many of them are there who have such cordial relations 
 at their dinners ? And, besides, the companions seated 
 here and there with a piece of bread and cheese or meat 
 from the charcuterie. They, too, would like a warm 
 meal if someone were to offer it. But they have no one 
 to care for their meals. Their wife is dead, ill, or lives 
 too far away. Alas, often, too, she is too lazy, or her 
 children need her attention, or her husband's noon meal 
 does not interest her. How one wishes for a good 
 warm meal for each served by such loving hands ! That 
 would cut the labor of the day agreeably and give cour- 
 age to continue. Solitary bread is bitter. To eat it 
 long, the eater risks going to console himself with blue 
 wine. Do not throw the stone at him. Pity him rather. 
 But, like his fate where shadow holds too much place, 
 it makes them appreciate still more this young couple 
 where there is such love. With all my heart I wish that 
 love will endure, and I would see the example propa- 
 gated. 
 
THE VOICE OP NATURE. 99 
 
 HABIT. 
 
 When one enters the dormitory of a military caserne 
 in the morning one is fairly strangled by an unbreath- 
 able and suffocating atmosphere. But those who sleep 
 in*the place do not perceive it. They sleep peacefully, 
 and doubtless would scold the importunate visitor who 
 would open the windows to let in a little pure air. We 
 live like this often, in a morally vitiated atmosphere, 
 without knowing it, ready to cry when a less impure 
 breath touches our heads, "Quick, shut the window, 
 there is a draught,." One can accustom oneself to 
 everything, even miasma. Once accustomed, they ask 
 but to remain there. I wish to represent in a topical 
 example the tranquillity of mind which gives birth to 
 long routines and where men are asleep rocked by the 
 statu quo. 
 
 If there is a dog's trade it is that of sheriff. It seems 
 that it must keep a man continually out of breath. To 
 carry it on daily supposes an inexhaustible stock of 
 impudence, of hardness, a headsman's heart, in fact. 
 So the sheriff is in general a man much feared. They 
 avoid his approach, and his name holds nothing sympa- 
 thetic. He is represented as a misanthrope without 
 bowels of compassion, happy over the misery that he 
 inflicts. It may be that some certain ones do answer to 
 this sad model. But they are the exception. The others 
 are like the rest of the world : they do their duty as the 
 harvesters make their harvest, as the bee gathers its 
 booty, without thinking more of the evil they do than 
 
 LofC. 
 
100 THE VOICE OP NATURE. 
 
 does the knife of the guillotine which cuts off heads. 
 This trade is often handed down from father to son. 
 They exercise it with a filial piety. There are even 
 sheriffs who have some heart and furnish proofs of it 
 outside their service. In fact, one is not more surprised 
 or hampered by being sheriff than by being doctor, 
 teacher, soldier or forester. 
 
 Do you wish a proof? I know a sheriff who is far 
 from having the appearance of one. Rosy, with a fresh 
 color, light curling hair, he has the appearance of one 
 bringing good news. Willingly we would choose him 
 to transmit messages which should rejoice people's 
 hearts. His physiognomy has I know not what of hap- 
 piness, announcing that something is about to happen 
 which each one would congratulate him on. It was a 
 head dreamed of to give toasts at christenings of first- 
 borns, and at weddings where the couple married for 
 love, or after a dinner of stock-holders who had just 
 received their big dividends. 
 
 Still he is sheriff, without any mistake. He works 
 hard even at his business. I should be telling a false- 
 hood if I said that he had ever regretted certain acts 
 having an evident character of infamy, which he had 
 accomplished in the name of the law, such as to notify 
 unfortunate tenants, widows, orphans and sick people 
 that they must quit the place in twenty-four hours. He 
 followed his trade — everybody must live. 
 
 The other evening the sun was near the horizon. It 
 was the hour when chickens go to roost, when sheriffs 
 cease to serve papers, I saw him seated in the imperial 
 of an omnibus. He held a great bundle of papers in 
 
THE VOICE OP NATURE. 101 
 
 both arms, and with his head leaning backward a little 
 he slept. The petrel sleeps on the storm, and he slept on 
 his exploits. 
 
 He had the innocent air of a child asleep. 
 
 And yet, in the flanks of that bundle, swollen like the 
 body of a reptile, were significations, constatations, 
 commandments, summonses, seizures, assignments, op- 
 positions, protests, evictions, orders for arrest and other 
 horrors of the same class, the wherewith to cause tears 
 to flow and excite despair. What a cushion, my friend, 
 to sleep on ! The man of law cared little for that. 
 
 I thought that quietude extraordinary, but I was very 
 innocent. 
 
 What this man did there we all do under the power- 
 ful and insensible empire of routine. We all sleep 
 peacefully on some heap of injustice. We no longer 
 see them, they are accomplished with so much regu- 
 larity. Miseries elbow us, ignominies surround us, old 
 lies hem us in and asphyxiate us. Who, then, notices it 
 or worries about it ? A few beings considered as fools, 
 with exalted ideas, those who would hinder round 
 dances. Others drink iniquity like water. It would be 
 easier to awaken the dead than to get a hearing from 
 these benumbed consciences. 
 
 A thick gangue slowly gathers by long practice, 
 gathers over our intelligences and our hearts. That 
 which has lasted a long time ends by seeming necessary 
 and just, a little sacred even. You are forbidden to 
 touch it. Oh, the terrible force of inertia ! the incurable 
 blindness resulting from accepted customs, of current 
 manners, of all that makes a man limp along behind the 
 
102 THH VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 others without frowning and believing himself not re- 
 sponsible for his actions ! Voices call him, but he does 
 not hear ; he is no longer capable of judging. 
 
 The ferocity of the malefactors of this profession is 
 nothing in comparison with the unconscious cruelty of 
 the amateurs of the statu quo, to the frightful calm of 
 the victims of routine, of all centers and all beliefs. 
 For the malefactor is an exception whom one could 
 overcome. The men of routine are legion ; on the con- 
 trary they are the majority, the rule, and if these mon- 
 sters predominate, they earn for themselves the titles of 
 good people. 
 
 QUESTIONS OF AGE. 
 
 Under the obsession of the knowledge of his fragil- 
 ity, man willingly admires that which is lasting. It 
 seems to him that this durability constitutes a proof of 
 quality. Without further verifying this judgment the 
 mass accept it. A fiction in form only, it is in reality 
 a matter of routine and a sheep-like following of animal 
 habits by temperament. That which has lasted long 
 seems to him to be legitimate. Let the innovator be- 
 ware. The crowd looks at him as the great-eyed cow 
 in the Alpine pasturages looks at the passers, but she 
 does not follow them. 
 
 This innovation asks novelties, needs distraction, a 
 capricious instinct, a puerile curiosity. Do not the 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 103 
 
 children do the same ? ' That does not hinder them from 
 being a little crazy, slaves to their petty habits. To 
 these who thirst for novelty, change the place of their 
 beds, their plates, and they will supplicate you to put 
 them back in the place where they have always seen 
 them. 
 
 Get along! These ancient things have always been 
 the trumps in their game. A secret inclination holds us 
 within their lines. So do old nurses keep a tyrannical 
 empire over their nurslings, even after they have be- 
 come men. 
 
 "That is absurd !" you will say, if you are of this 
 corporation of hard-heads. Absurd often, yes; and 
 profoundly sorrowful. To see the world prefer old 
 errors to young truths, old iniquities to the new birth 
 of justice, the old slaveries to the hopeful liberty of to- 
 day, is discouraging. But, at the bottom of so much 
 incoherence, lies a grain of logic. Durability, in the 
 eyes of these men, is the sister of eternity. The longer 
 a thing has lasted, the greater proof it has seemed to 
 give of positive value, and in fact there is some truth 
 in that appreciation. "House founded one hundred 
 years ago" is a recommendation for a social reason. 
 "Principle recognized from the greatest antiquity" is 
 a title of nobility in the domain of ideas. Let us not 
 formalize, having our eyes open only. On this question 
 of antiquity one is exposed to a thousand errors. Let 
 us not be dupes. We are not deceived on the question 
 of antiquity by wardrobes and sideboards alone. Since 
 the taste for ancient knick-knacks has taken root, trick- 
 ery multiplies with the aim of satisfying it There 
 
104 THE VOICE OP NATURE. 
 
 exists a trickery analogous to that in the domain of 
 beliefs and principles. Would you have an example? 
 
 The principle of free examination is decried in cer- 
 tain centers as a new principle. Novel, new, young, 
 inexperienced, are they not all of one family ? It dates 
 to the Renaissance, this principle of the Reformation. 
 Far more ancient, surer in consequence, wiser, more 
 prudent, is the authoritative principle. In this the au- 
 thorities are deceived. The principle of free examina- 
 tion antedates theirs. And, besides, it is apostolic. St. 
 Paul recommends it totheThessalonians in these terms, 
 'Trove all things and keep to that which is good." But 
 authoritative religion existed before St. Paul. Agreed ; 
 but so did the principle of examination also. Christ 
 said, "Seek, knock at the door — sound." But admit 
 that Jesus here was but a late comer in history, after 
 centuries of authoritative religion. Forget those 
 prophets so ardent in their appeals to good sense, to the 
 consciences and to the reason of their contemporaries. 
 
 The principle of free examination has no less an- 
 tiquity for itself. In fact it has almost existed before 
 humanity. Do not seek here either subtlety or ex- 
 aggeration. According to what law do plants grow? 
 Each one of them feels all that ambient surrounding 
 and holds only that which is good. Animals do the 
 same. All organisms live on the same principle, to try, 
 retain or reject. 
 
 Human mind has no other law. As soon as it begins 
 to live it judges ; as soon as it judges it makes a choice 
 and trial — it proves and retains or rejects. It is by that 
 law that the stomach digests and the lungs breathe. 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 105 
 
 And you call this principle young because for the last 
 two or three centuries they have begun anew to see it. 
 But even had it not been discovered until 1900, it would 
 still be the elder of its oldest detractors, for it is eternal. 
 Truth, even if we saw her for the first time, is as old 
 as the stars of heaven. But, like them also, she is 
 immortally young. 
 
 TO SERVE AT THE RIGHT MOMENT. 
 
 Between the culinary art and the art of speaking or 
 writing there are numerous analogies and full of sense. 
 To the disdainful litterateur trying to contest this, I 
 offer whole a bouquet of locutions to smell, and all well 
 made, to justify my claim. 
 
 Do we not speak currently of the cooking of a news- 
 paper, of literary taste, of the salt or pepper by which 
 writers add to their style ? A certain book is a delicate 
 dish, another an insipid ragout, a macedoine, a sal- 
 magundi, a bouillabaisse. There are tonic readers and 
 indigestible ones. Sometimes the reader devours like a 
 gourmand, sometimes he takes it slowly like a connois- 
 seur. To-day he eats daintily, to-morrow he licks his 
 fingers. If he is sharp he often sees that you have 
 served him a warmed-over dish. You may bring him 
 the next day the same thing served covered with an- 
 other sauce, the very piece of which he would have none 
 the day before. Then, to change, you regale him with 
 some side dish ; then, tired of straining and refining it, 
 you say very raw things., 
 
106 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 A cook, even a young one, having just passed the 
 stage where they call him a spoil-sauce, could give 
 writers, orators and educators something to reflect on, 
 all those who have something to say to others. 
 
 To help them to attain their goals of words, a certain 
 faculty is indispensable. 
 
 First, you must prepare your dish according to the 
 needs of those for whom it is destined. Then you must 
 present it to give it your seal, set it on the table exactly 
 cooked to the point and the hour. How many men fail 
 to recognize this last little detail. They always come 
 in like the mustard after dinner, or too soon, while no 
 one is yet hungry. They offer breakfast at night and 
 supper in theimorning, and complain that they have not 
 been successful. 
 
 If what we have to say is of a delicate nature let us 
 strain it, and, thanks to the seasoning, let us give it a 
 favorable taste; let us prepare the ground, let us gild 
 the pill. Truth is by no means that stereotyped and 
 rigid thing which never changed shade nor aspect, and 
 keeps the same face and the same impression at all 
 hours. She needs to be appropriated to practical exac- 
 tions, brought within our reach, brought nearer to our 
 horizon. As you know how, or do not know how, to 
 administrate, she will produce altogether different 
 effects. There are people able to say everything, gain- 
 ing hearers on the least agreeable subjects. Why? 
 Question of cooking. Ask the recipe. 
 
 All this came to my mind the other evening on ac- 
 count of an altogether ordinary fact. 
 
 The soup boiled in the kettle. Baby, wrapped in a 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 107 
 
 napkin whose corners formed for him ears like those 
 of a donkey, agitated his arms and was glad to eat. His 
 little sister quickly offered him an overfull spoon. 
 Scarcely had he touched it when the nursling began to 
 scream and, turning, defended himself with his hands 
 and obstinately refused to eat. Persistence on the 
 part of the little sister, exasperation on that of the 
 brother. "Naughty baby, wicked baby that will not 
 eat his soup." Mamma heard the cries and came upon 
 the scene. "But, my child, that soup is far too hot. 
 Wait until it is cool enough and baby will only too 
 gladly eat it." 
 
 A detail you say, a scene from the nursery ? That is 
 nothing and has no signification nor value. Useless to 
 speak of it- 
 One instant, if you please. Have you not ever made 
 observations, just, well-merited, and which produced no 
 effect, to your friends, your children, your servants, and 
 to other persons ? I made a mistake, for they invaria- 
 bly exasperate those interested. Hard heads, you think, 
 incorrigible dispositions. That may be the case. There 
 are certain badly balanced individualities, to whom all 
 criticism is an offence and who will take nothing from 
 any one. Still, let me say to you, the fault is not always 
 on the side of those who refuse to listen. It is often on 
 the side of the one who speaks, even if what he says is 
 absolutely reasonable. Then what is the matter ? It is 
 because of the temperature. You served it too hot. 
 Carried away by your first impulse, you empty your 
 drink too hot, and you scald your audience. Naturally 
 they are going to vociferate or fly. 
 
lOg THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 Take more precautions, let it stand, let it cool, and 
 you will find that you please. 
 
 Others fall into the opposite excess. They serve too 
 cold. What they say has neither savor nor strength, so 
 congealed it is. Thus they talk at a pure loss. 
 
 A third complains that he never reaches any solid 
 end, in spite of the evident quality of his knowledge, or 
 the fervor of his propaganda. Watch him well; he 
 spoils all because he peppers right and left. 
 
 I assure you in all seriousness, lessons of tact, of 
 judicious proceedings are to be borrowed from cooks. 
 All teachers, all journalists who respect themselves, and 
 all apostles of a cause should initiate themselves into the 
 culinary methods and learn to transpose their domain. 
 Knowledge, talent and zeal are not enough. A crowd 
 of men, very capable and animated by the best inten- 
 tions, still do not succeed excepting in proving contra- 
 dictions instead of spreading conviction in minds. 
 What is lacking, then? A little of that spirit of exact 
 measure and exact time which distinguishes the cordon 
 bleu, and without which the greatest thinker risks burn- 
 ing his cooking or putting his feet in his dish. 
 
 MONSIEUR SON-IN-LAW. 
 
 The widow Martin married the eldest of her four 
 daughters last year. The son-in-law is a real cock-of- 
 the-walk. For years there had not been a man in the 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 109 
 
 house. The first to enter it therefore found very 
 favorable circumstances, and installed himself there as 
 a privileged person. They were all glad of his pres- 
 ence, and asked but to spoil him. His word carried an 
 almost ridiculous authority. 
 
 Now, this gentleman abused it most decidedly. He 
 was a man of strong opinions and a jealous intoler- 
 ance. A little firmness and opposition would have been 
 salutary for him. The preliminary disposition to find 
 everything that he did or said good, and to bow before 
 all his wills, had made a small tyrant of him. 
 
 The family was large, surrounded by a circle of 
 friends of very varied sorts of opinions and circum- 
 stances, the which constitutes a good centre, large, ven- 
 tilated, where one could hear the sound of all the politi- 
 cal or religious bells ring. Naturally, the marriage 
 changed nothing of the old relations. They met often, 
 they neighbored, they dined together, on regular days, 
 and every one said what he thought without fear or 
 malice. The free speech was the foundation. They 
 had all the liberties save that of getting angry. 
 
 Monsieur son-in-law thought that scandalous. They 
 uttered enormities, they sustained dangerous opinions, 
 they sapped the bases of society, of religion and of the 
 family. These interlocutors, note it well, were all good 
 people, enlightened, correct, respecting the rights and 
 thoughts of others. Some were more to the right, 
 others more to the left, but they were not sectarians 
 neither of authority, nor of independence. They talked 
 more than discussed, and if ever the dialogue grew 
 close, and they reached a dangerous heat, it was with 
 
HO THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 courtesy, even on the gravest problems. Then they 
 parted friends without bitterness. 
 
 Monsieur son-in-law could not take part in such a 
 frame of mind. He suffered from it, it made him ill. 
 The contrast between the family reunions where he 
 was but a guest like the rest, and the daily life where 
 he reigned alone, was a cruel trial for him. When he 
 was alone with the five good people who adored him he 
 was dogmatic, thunderous, he excommunicated. He 
 paid for the silence he had kept before those interlocu- 
 tors armed with reasons. Returning to the conversa- 
 tions at the dinner of the day before he declared that 
 he found them regrettable. He had preferred to keep 
 silence rather than to provoke a scandal, but really he 
 ought to have protested. Certain things should not be 
 said ; doubts exist which it is not permitted any one to 
 express — authorities unquestionable. If the first comer 
 could in the name of science, or conscience, examine, 
 weigh, attack these venerable doctrines on which so- 
 ciety and religion lived for centuries past, where would 
 it end? 
 
 In short, monsieur son-in-law wished to insist that 
 they should not speak at table of religion, of politics, 
 nor of certain moral or social questions. That would 
 be better than those rash babblings. But, if the desire 
 is clear, the means for realizing it can scarcely be 
 found. They could not muzzle their guests, nor exact, 
 while seated at another's table, that those objectionable 
 questions should be avoided. So Madame Martin and 
 her daughters reached the extreme limit of the conces- 
 sions possible to make. They were facing the first 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. ;Ql 
 
 great difficulty of the household. A certain discontent 
 reigned in all their hearts, and monsieur son-in-law 
 was annoyed. The other night, in the parlor, he held 
 a family album, and for an hour he gave himself up to 
 a work that seemed to absorb him greatly. His mother- 
 in-law approached and said: "What are you doing, 
 my son?" 
 
 "I am classing this album according to my sympa- 
 thies and antipathies." 
 
 "And whose are those photographs that you have 
 taken out and have even thrown down on the floor ?" 
 
 "They are heads that displease me decidedly. You 
 will do me a great pleasure in hiding them away in 
 some drawer." 
 
 "Dear son, you know that all my wish is that you 
 should be happy, but I cannot sacrifice my old friends 
 for the sole reason that there is a difference of opinion 
 between you and them. Put yourself in my place. Be- 
 sides, I have still three daughters to marry. If each of 
 my three sons-in-law whom I hope to have some day 
 ask me to expurgate my family album nothing would 
 remain of it but the cover. We must know how to bear 
 with and love persons whose convictions are diverse. 
 If families divided simply for motives of difference of 
 opinion, what would become of the country, that 
 greater family ? There are ties superior even to the ties 
 of our most holy beliefs, and they are those of gentle- 
 ness, kindness and benevolent fraternity. What would 
 our beliefs be worth if they are not strong enough to 
 maintain us in the brotherhood, which surpasses in 
 meaning all the doctrines and formulas ?" 
 
112 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 "Good mother, I have the regret to hold on that sub- 
 ject quite different ideas. Principle before everything. 
 Friendship, relationship, benevolence, all should bend 
 before principle." 
 
 "My dear son, I respect your principles. But I will 
 not follow you in that road. It leads far, too far. I 
 should be afraid that I should come to walk in places 
 where they never meet charity again." 
 
 Decidedly I am for good mother-in-law. This mon- 
 sieur son-in-law reminds me of those men ceaselessly 
 engaged in expurgating the country, the church, or even 
 that little sect to which they belong. To reduce one's 
 adversary to silence, to lay a finger on the questions and 
 say, "That is closed, fixed, judged; do not touch it," 
 but of one's own authority to revise, correct or deci- 
 mate that book of history, what an impious enterprise 
 and as fanatical as absurd. Is there a hero, a saint, a 
 thinker or a martyr who would find grace in the eyes 
 of all parties? At this count there would remain not 
 I one page nor one face in the book of gold of the past. 
 
 Let us take the world as it is. Accept all its con- 
 trasts and its varieties, and let us not attempt to pass 
 the level of our principles on men and things. Let us 
 be firm in our convictions and our beliefs, supporting 
 and respecting those of others, discussing them and 
 allowing others the same privilege. But let us create 
 ties deeper than those of doctrine; fraternize with 
 
THE VOICE OP NATURE. H3 
 
 those who think as we do. However venerable an idea 
 may be, however numerous the quarterings of nobility- 
 there are on that grand seigneur called a "principle," to 
 force ourselves to bow before the commandment which 
 is superior to all, "Little children, love one another." 
 
 WELL INFORMED. 
 
 The student Fortenix had just successfully competed 
 for a prize in astronomy. This was an occasion to re- 
 gale his friends. He invited three of his friends to 
 breakfast at a restaurant. While waiting for the hour 
 he shaved himself in his room on the fifth floor, rue de 
 Fleurus. 
 
 A little after eleven o'clock his friend Dumont en- 
 tered without knocking and clapped him on the back, 
 saying : 
 
 "Good morning, Victor; how does it go?" 
 
 "Don't push me, you'll make me cut myself. Sit 
 down and read the paper. You are ahead of time." 
 
 "Ahead ! No, it is noon." 
 
 "Are you sure? I am only eleven thirty-five." 
 
 "I have just set my watch by the big clock at the 
 Luxembourg." 
 
114 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 "A thousand pardons if that is the case. My watch 
 loses time and I will set it right." 
 
 About twenty minutes later Mignard comes in daint- 
 ily, with a rose in his button hole. The two others 
 received him, saying : 
 
 "Ah, there you are, you old rascal." 
 
 "Yes, as always, on military time." 
 
 "How military? It is twenty minutes past twelve, 
 and the rendezvous is for noon." 
 
 "It is exactly noon. I have a watch that never trips, 
 and, besides, I have just set it by the clock at the 
 Luxembourg, or rather it was just right by that clock." 
 
 "Ah, I've caught you at your tricks ! The Luxem- 
 bourg time is this, twenty minutes after twelve, neither 
 more nor less." 
 
 "Don't be vexed, Dumont. We'll ask Gignon when 
 he comes." 
 
 But Gignon was late. To kill the time they smoked 
 a lot of cigarettes. On his side Gignon hurries, hur- 
 ries from his distant hospital by the rue des Ecoles, the 
 rue Racine and the Odeon. He knows that he is late, 
 poor fellow, and does not like to keep the others wait- 
 ing. Fortunately, in passing the Luxembourg he had 
 the idea to look at the big clock, and, reassured, he 
 slowed his watch, and his steps also, and made the tour 
 of the pepiniere to get his breath. Then he mounted to 
 Fortenix, calm, like one who arrives at the exact mo- 
 ment. Scarcely had the door opened when the three 
 others began to apostrophize him, and say "Put him 
 out!" 
 
 "Late? Was it not for noon?" 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE ^g 
 
 "Yes, but it is a long time since noon." 
 
 "As to that, no. I am well informed. I have just set 
 my watch by the clock of Luxembourg." 
 
 "How? He, too. This is a comedy. Which of us 
 three is right ?" 
 
 All cried that "It is me." 
 
 Fortenix said gravely : 
 
 "Take out your watches. Let's compare them." 
 
 They did so. Dumont's marked a quarter to one; 
 Mignard's, twenty minutes after twelve ; Gignon's, ten 
 minutes after twelve. 
 
 "Very well, when one has an Omega like yours, Gig- 
 non, or like yours, Dumont, or a Peugeot in a bronzed 
 aluminum case, people do not meddle with the time. 
 Here is a watch, mine, an authentic chronometer, 
 stamped by the observatory at Geneva." 
 
 "Hush, Mignard. You are not patriotic to seek your 
 time in a foreign time-piece. Are these people going 
 to meddle in telling us the time in France? Does that 
 matter to them? Besides, there is a means of coming 
 to our accord. To go to Boul. Mich, we will pass by 
 the Luxembourg, and can see what time it is. These 
 discussions are profitless, and should cease." 
 
 And they went out. 
 
 When they reached the venerable facade of the Palais 
 du Senat, the four young men stopped, with open 
 mouths at first, and then they were shaken by a 
 Homeric laugh. It was still twelve o'clock. 
 
 In politics, in religion, in business and justice how 
 many people there are who inform themselves like 
 these young nurslings of the muses ! News circulates, 
 
lift THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 reputations melt, opinions form and are uprooted, ideas 
 are installed which should cause to live or which may 
 cause to die. Go to the bottom of things. There are 
 but stories, hypotheses, categorical affirmations without 
 doubt, but they are gratuitous. They have all or nearly 
 all set their watches by clocks which do not go. 
 
 These clocks exercise quite a particular fascination 
 for some. They are immovable and always mark the 
 same hour. A little more, they would make us believe 
 that they marked the hour of eternity. 
 
 IMPOSSIBLE SYMPATHY. 
 
 It is said, "Weep with those who weep." And that 
 is the best way to console. To talk with them, to 
 reason with them, to attempt to amuse, or preach — all 
 that like a moral help is not worth one sincere tear, and 
 you shall understand why. 
 
 Jean Pierre went to America about 1846, leaving his 
 father's plow and his five brothers. Since then he 
 wrote them but rarely and told them that he had suc- 
 ceeded in his business, but nothing more. A last, brief 
 letter was received in 1853, and then no more. 
 
 At the death of the father, which happened not long 
 after, the brothers divided his property, the sixth par' 
 
THE VOICE OP NATURE. H7 
 
 being reserved for the absent brother and confided to a 
 notary. 
 
 Twenty years passed without news from him. 
 
 Every time a child of that province went to America 
 he was asked to find trace of him. And, as no news 
 was received, or trace found, they finally had recourse 
 to the courts. It was established that Jean Pierre hav- 
 ing left his last residence in 1853 had gone to some 
 unknown destination; all trace of him was therefore 
 lost, and no one knew where he was, alive or dead. 
 
 During this time his fields and meadows brought 
 him, good year and bad, about a thousand francs, which 
 were deposited with a business man. It grew and 
 rounded out. Jealous ones felt more or less envy. As 
 to the brothers, all married and fathers of families, they 
 said: 
 
 "Jean Pierre is dead — that is certain. We have no 
 proofs, but one day or other all his property will come 
 to us and our children. We will let it grow and swell 
 in the meantime. It is like a good cloud which forms 
 and approaches. One day it will fall on our heads in a 
 rain of gold." 
 
 Twenty-five or thirty thousand. francs is a great sum 
 for those who earn their bread in the furrows at the 
 sweat of their brows. They must reap, make the bun- 
 dles, tie them, make stacks, sheafs and sell them, also 
 dozens of eggs or rolls of butter, to at last realize a 
 thousand franc note. 
 
 So, as the years ran along, the place that Jean Pierre 
 took in his brother's minds became more and more 
 disquieting. Their daughters were considered as the 
 
113 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 heiresses by all the village, and pretendants began to 
 ask for their hands. 
 
 During the long winter nights they reckoned the part 
 which would belong to each when the division should 
 be made. Around the tables in the village inn the t 
 lawyers, in wooden shoes, spoke oracles on the question. 
 
 One morning in November it had snowed in a savage 
 manner. The poor rural letter carrier reached his desti- 
 nation all white and covered with icicles. To the first 
 one he met he said : "I have in my sack a letter from 
 America for Jean Pierre's brothers." In five minutes 
 the whole village knew it. The brothers ran to the 
 home of their eldest; half the village people gathered 
 under the windows. "It is a notification of his death," 
 said some. "Perhaps yes and perhaps no; we cannot 
 tell," said others. The postman had shaken the snow 
 from his garments ; his letter delivered, he stood be- 
 hind the stove, hoping to have a fat tip. Then, before 
 his brothers and their united families, the eldest 
 brother, trembling in the midst of the general emotion, 
 read what follows : 
 
 "I ask of you all pardon for having left you so long 
 without news. My intention was to abandon to you 
 all which came to me from my father. But reverses of 
 fortune forbid that I should do this. I have lost all in 
 a great financial crash. Old and broken, I am about to 
 return to Europe with my wife and children. 
 
 "Jean Pierre." 
 
 A deadly silence followed the reading of this letter. 
 Then they looked at each other stupidly, appearing like 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. ±±Q 
 
 people who had received a heavy blow which had 
 stunned them,. 
 
 At last the women began to weep, and little by little 
 the whole family broke out into lamentations over this 
 brother, who was thus restored to them. The postman 
 slipped out like a bird of sorrow, feeling vaguely re- 
 sponsible for the news he had brought. 
 
 Few dead men are wept as sincerely as was this 
 living brother. But there was one thing which I would 
 have been glad to partake of still less, and that was the 
 unholy joy of some of the spectators outside, only yes- 
 terday envious of the hopes of the heirs, to-day rav- 
 ished at their discomfiture. 
 
 TO DISTRUST ONESELF. 
 
 No, I am not distrustful by nature. The saddest 
 experiences have not converted me to that state of 
 mind, which should only belong to judges, and be 
 shown to robbers and criminals. We should believe in 
 goodness. One is less often deceived in so doing. It 
 is a pure superstition to suppose that the greater part 
 of men are stained in some way, and to pass one's life 
 with a hand on one's pocketbook or revolver, as though 
 the whole society was composed of men of the sack 
 and cord. 
 
120 THE VOICE OP NATURE. 
 
 But there is a right measure for everything, even to 
 confidence. So I ask nothing better than to believe in 
 the good faith of people and to admit that they are sin- 
 cere in their words ; above all, when they express their 
 religious convictions. But I have noticed throughout 
 my life that the most honest among us pay themselves 
 easily with words. Now, these words are recipients. 
 It remains to know what we put into them. A bon-bon 
 or a vial may hold a salutary beverage or a poison and 
 show nothing of its quality, and the same word may 
 contain very different ideas. It is possible, above all, 
 that it be absolutely empty, and that constantly hap- 
 pens. To talk is not always to stir up one's thoughts. 
 It is to juggle with empty forms. A judicious distrust 
 and one without malice is an excellent companion to 
 listen to discourses or read writings. 
 
 It is wise to mistrust those who pronounce big, con- 
 sequential words with ease, which are susceptible of a 
 widespread meaning, words deserving of being called 
 grave because they are vast and resonant, loaded with 
 substance. Those who pronounce such words with ease 
 do not know their value and lodge nothing in them; 
 otherwise they would perceive their weight. 
 
 Have you ever noticed with what simple expressions 
 Christ himself served to announce the news which was 
 to change the face of the world ? The apostles left Him 
 far behind them on the employment of grandiose, mys- 
 terious and solemn terms. The fathers of the church 
 went farther than the apostles. To-day there is no 
 orator or author, however well-dyed in theology or 
 philosophy, who regularly uses the clear-cut words. 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 121 
 
 One asks himself how it is that they do not bend be- 
 neath the weight of the burden of such great words, for 
 all the human and divine mysteries are contained 
 therein. Distrust yourself ! Those who employ these 
 enormous terms, have they really measured their depths 
 and heights, traversed their immensities? It has been 
 said that we must not take the name of God in vain ; 
 that yes be yes, and no, no. The counsel is in a general 
 sense. We should not pronounce one word in vain. It 
 is a lack of respect for the holiest thing we have, 
 thought. On how many lips do words not become vain ! 
 One would say they have lost their energy. It is very 
 simple ; they are empty. An empty vessel will not in- 
 toxicate any one. 
 
 In the domain of sentiments, the vanity of the lan- 
 guage is not less than in that of the idea. They pro- 
 nounce the most decisive formulas without winking and 
 those engaging the greatest responsibility. Sacrifice, 
 devotion, love, pardon, pity, these words fall from lips 
 and pens with as great abundance and facility as drops 
 of crystal purity fall from a fountain. 
 
 But there is nothing that can equal the newspapers in 
 the great play of words used right and left, 
 
 This one will announce the most sinister news ; that 
 one speaks of his adversaries as though they were a 
 band of brigands; a third in an article unveils all the 
 most terrifying arcanums of European politics, as 
 though he had the key to all the private drawers, the 
 ears of all the sovereigns. After that they take their 
 copy to the printer, and go to breakfast in a state of 
 entire calm. If what they said were serious, if they 
 
122 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 believed it themselves, it would take away their appe- 
 tites and hinder them from sleeping. Distrust oneself ! 
 
 The other day, in a steep street, there passed near me 
 a truck on which were piled fifty or sixty hogsheads, 
 drawn by one single horse. One of my children ob- 
 served : 
 
 "Papa, that horse must be enormously strong to 
 draw all those hogsheads of wine." 
 
 "Those hogsheads are empty, my son," I replied. 
 "If they were all full no four horses could draw them." 
 
 How many empty casks are carried thus by people. 
 Distrust them ! When you have heard something very 
 sonorous be very prudent; perhaps they have rolled 
 before you, artfully, a majestic tun, long since emptied 
 of its contents, but which sounds the louder for that. 
 
 One true word, sincere and full as an egg, moves 
 itself simply and not without effort. One cannot say 
 many such words in one day ; one would succumb with 
 the efTort. But they are alive, strong, active. The less 
 noise they make, the more work they do. In them is 
 hidden such a power that they strike down, or else con- 
 sole, lift up and draw onward. 
 
 I have often prayed to God this prayer, to be able to 
 say every day of my life and under all circumstances, 
 with an absolute confidence and accepting the con- 
 sequences that they may bring, these six words only: 
 "I believe in God, the Father." With that I shall have 
 provisions of courage, of tranquil hope and of good and 
 cordial fraternity lasting for hundreds and hundreds 
 of centuries. Nothing will ever stop me or make me 
 afraid. I will brave death, I will move mountains. 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 123 
 
 We hear and speak so many beautiful and sublime 
 words, and they ordinarily have so little effect. Why? 
 Alas ! alas ! What do we put in the words ? All lies in 
 that. Distrust, distrust, and above all distrust oneself ! 
 
 FIND THE FORMULA. 
 
 Everybody knows the automatic distributors. These 
 are of all forms. Here for a penny you may find the 
 secret of your future. There for ten cents you are 
 served with a box of candy, a square of chocolate, a 
 bottle of perfume, or even to see photographs. 
 Facetious mechanics have created an automatic chicken 
 which claps its wings and crows like a rooster, and for 
 two cents lays you eggs of metal filled with nasty pep- 
 permint pastilles. These automatic distributors do 
 good business doubtless, since every day sees more of 
 them. One single check is to be stated. We have seen 
 in certain neighborhoods rise above the sidewalks big, 
 hollow columns, very ugly ones, which were intended 
 to distribute hot water automatically to housekeepers. 
 The enterprise never came to anything, I think, for not 
 one of those columns near which I passed was ever 
 finished. 
 
 The water not having been a success, they tried to 
 distribute alcoholic beverages by the same proceeding. 
 The drinkers entered a sort of bar where for small 
 sums they could get beer, wine, cider, coffee and all the 
 series of bitters and appetizers without the intervention 
 
124 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 of any bar-tender. The service was accomplished by 
 the distributors. As soon as the piece of money was 
 put into the apparatus the order was filled. No tedious 
 waiting; no preference for the clients. A waiter in a 
 cafe and a girl in a brewery have different ways of 
 serving. They despise some and favor others, and are 
 some times quick and at others of an exasperating slow- 
 ness. The distributor knows no differences; it shows 
 the same face to all. It is the ideal of impartiality. It 
 is true that at your departure it cannot salute you, nor 
 help you to put your coat on, but did it ever expect a 
 tip, or receive one with a disdainful air from a modest 
 client? 
 
 Not all is to be condemned in this system. When 
 perfected it can simplify life. We will have some day 
 incorrigible fustians, actors, professors and orators, all 
 automatic. And that would be a clear gain. So many 
 men would be advantageously replaced by this mechan- 
 ism, for they are themselves but poor machines which 
 grate and scratch noisily or stop every moment. I have 
 not, then, come to make war on those little machines, 
 whatever the astute avarice and commercial double- 
 dealing of those who exploit them, and for the good 
 money that we put in furnish us with doubtful prod- 
 ucts. The machine is not responsible for the intentions 
 of the proprietor, and, besides, does not allow itself to 
 accept anything from any one but those who really wish 
 the article within. 
 
 What I would wish is to draw from those archi- 
 modern instruments certain analogies in the intellectual 
 and moral domain. The idea came to me the other 
 
THE VOICE OP NATURE. 125 
 
 day in a telegraph office. I saw the public pass before 
 the little box that held the printed slips destined to re- 
 ceive the telegrams, and bears this suggestive notice: 
 "Draw out the formulas. " The more I looked at these 
 four little words, the more I was struck by their sym- 
 bolic bearing. Draw out the formula. That is a sort 
 of universal device regarding practices already adopted, 
 and characterizing the most widespread state of mind 
 of these days. A crowd of our contemporaries have 
 received no other education than that embodied in those 
 words. The years of their youth have been passed 
 in gathering an abundant provision of formulas. As 
 the druggists put their drugs in pills, the capable in- 
 tellectual druggists put science, history, politics, social 
 economy, morals or religion into formulas. The value 
 of this automatic method to the young nurslings is 
 judged by their dexterity in drawing out the formula. 
 In examinations which could be compared to mechani- 
 cal essays, they ask them questions as they would press 
 a button. If the machine works, well, they put the fac- 
 tory-mark on him, and he is admitted to practice. The 
 property of these automatic educations is to form sub- 
 jects each resembling the other as do the sample ma- 
 chines constructed on the same model. Their intel- 
 lectual function is so governed that one can easily tell 
 what will come out if the button is pressed. Between 
 an automatic musical automaton and man, who is a 
 reasoning machine, there may be differences, but they 
 are in the favor of the music boxes. I am completely 
 saturated with this system, which at length takes away 
 all our originality, but it has not ceased to please the 
 
126 the VOICE OF nature: 
 
 greater number, and for the simple reason that there is 
 nothing handier. 
 
 Why put ourselves to the trouble of seeking other 
 things when a good collection of formulas will suffice 
 to solve all the questions ? It is an altogether too pain- 
 ful business, that of the seeker for truth. To clear new 
 fields, to walk far from well-trodden paths, to set 
 serious and luminous rights wrong, what an enter- 
 prise ! Life would not be long enough. Would it not 
 be better to carry along the road a sack of formulas ? 
 
 Thus runs the world. We could not distrust this 
 disquieting laziness of mind which is winning us. For, 
 there is no denying it, life is kept up by the habit above 
 all things, however old, of thinking for oneself. The 
 farther the empire of formula extends, the smaller the 
 horizon grows. There is nothing more bad, dangerous 
 and false than a ready-made answer. We reach it by 
 the system of never producing any more personal 
 thought, and if Descartes had reason to say : "1 think; 
 therefore I am," we must conclude that the majority 
 of men do not exist, for they do not think. 
 
 It was after these pessimistic reflections that I left 
 the telegraph office, throwing a last look at the symbolic 
 box and its disquieting invitation, "Draw out the for- 
 mula." 
 
 INFAMOUS CAPITAL. 
 
 I consider the coupling of those words as a sort of 
 forced marriage. Since this marriage has taken place 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 127 
 
 there is a substantive afflicted with a very vexatious 
 qualification. It can no longer show itself in public 
 without its hanger-on. As the shadow follows the 
 body, the orderly the colonel, infamous follows capital. 
 Capital may show itself never so generous, humane, 
 just, noble; those adjectives are not for it. It is in- 
 famous, and infamous it should remain. Let it go out 
 in a carriage or on foot, let it be high or low, be phil- 
 anthropic, sick nurse, defender of feeble ones or exploit 
 them without shame, it does not alter the matter at all. 
 For capital is infamous by its very essence, as the negro 
 is black. Do what it may, capital will never get rid of 
 its original spot in the eyes of certain people. Would 
 they pardon it if it consented to die by pure devotion ? 
 I fear not. They would inscribe on its tomb, "Here lies 
 infamous capital." This is a crying injustice, a monu- 
 mental absurdity. 
 
 Capital is an instrument. It all depends upon the 
 hands that hold it. It is neither dangerous, maleficent, 
 oppressor nor corrupter in itself. It is not unclean or 
 ferocious by nature. Certain millions are as honest as 
 little pennies. Where, then, would be the grandeur of 
 capital which will give the measure of its infamy? It 
 would be like measuring dogs around their chests and 
 9 saying that the largest were the most vicious. The 
 Newfoundland and the Saint Bernard are large beasts, 
 and very well armed. Yet they harm no one. One 
 jumps into the water to save a life in danger, and the 
 other in the stormy nights goes to seek lost travellers. 
 But the little fellows, on the contrary, which are no 
 larger than a rabbit are often aggressive, savage and 
 
128 THE VOICE OP NATURE. 
 
 implacable. One would say of these wretched little 
 barkers that they have tiger blood in their veins. Thus 
 people can possess millions with a fraternal heart, and 
 small capitals with an instinct of ferocity. 
 
 Let us not listen to the declamations of arty one. 
 Watch how the people live ; it is a much surer way to 
 judge of their value. It is incontestable that there is a 
 large number of rich who do not merit their situation 
 and abuse it scandalously. In their hands capital is 
 hateful, bears evil fruit, engenders rottenness and 
 serves but to augment the sum of evil in the world. 
 
 But do not think that if the power should be given to 
 me that I would hasten to confide their treasures to a 
 syndicate composed of those who envy them. Never 
 in the world ! After having turned the matter over and 
 over, I might perhaps leave the things in the condition 
 where they now are, for fear the remedy would be 
 worse than the evil. A droll combination it would be 
 to repair the wrong-doings of one single bad man, to 
 call in several others to it. 
 
 If, however, I were here to make a decision, I would 
 not offer the administration of these illy employed 
 means to one of those who claimed it. 
 
 And, above all, I should take good care not to confide 
 this important deposit to a few brave people, accus- 
 tomed to handle the plow, to write good books, to in- 
 struct youth and to form public spirit. 
 
 I would be too much afraid that they would not 
 understand each other, that their capacities would not 
 reach the heights of their good will, that they would 
 fall into the hands of some clever brewers of business, 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 129 
 
 to use a mild term. But I would go and seek at his 
 home, in spite of him, one of those rich men who under- 
 stand their business, knowing how to manoeuvre their 
 possessions as a captain his troops, with order, pre- 
 cision and economy, making it a point of honor not to 
 be tricked by any one, and not to spend one cent with- 
 out need — not doing that from avarice, but the better to 
 serve the general good. Such men exist. I know sev- 
 eral of them. They are able to repose from business, to 
 allow themselves all the pleasures, and carve for them- 
 selves in this changeable life an exceptional career. 
 They prefer to load the burdens of others on their 
 shoulders, to charge themselves with a quantity of 
 affairs which neither you nor I would wish, take the 
 heavy loads, use their days in cares but too often recom- 
 pensed by ingratitude. One could not reasonably find 
 any interested motive in doing all this. They do good, 
 not to reach public position, nor even to leave a respect- 
 able name to their children. Among them some have 
 lost their children and others never had any. In the 
 eyes of an ordinary man, armed in his thick good sense, 
 or guided by his selfish calculations, they are crazy to 
 take so much trouble. Very well ; it is to just such 
 fools that I would confide badly employed capital. 
 
 They, also, are infamous. But their infamy inspires 
 me with more confidence than the honesty of their de- 
 tractors. Such men have no equals, I believe. I honor 
 them above all. The men of middling or inferior con- 
 dition, the most upright small bourgeois, or the most 
 respectable, in spite of the respect which they deserve 
 can never inspire such a complete sense of security. 
 
130 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 Riches are such a trial of one's worth that no one can 
 tell what he might become with them. 
 
 And if, feeling myself bound by certain words from 
 the Evangels, I would "sell all I have and give it to the 
 poor/' I would still choose these same intermediaries, 
 sure that in their hands the interests of the poor would 
 be better protected than in the hands of the poor them- 
 selves. 
 
 To irrigate a vast country of plains and prairies, 
 nothing is so good as a high region of springs, of 
 glaciers and snow. Nature has its capital. I do not 
 think that human society can ever surpass it. Do not 
 desire their destruction or their falling into infinitesimal 
 atoms. 
 
 Do you believe that the fields of Europe would be so 
 fertile if, instead of the enormous provisions gathered 
 in the Alps and the Pyrenees, each little butte had its 
 cap of ice or each hill its wig of eternal snow ? 
 
 READY MONEY. 
 
 Without thinking of evil you are going on your 
 way, when some one slips a little ticket into your hand 
 somewhat like a ticket for the railroad. On this square 
 of pasteboard you read : "Ready money," with an ad- 
 dress. 
 
 Quite near there, in fact, a booth was installed, bank 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 131 
 
 notes and pieces of gold and silver money of various 
 nations were strewn around in profusion. It was in 
 this booth that the little card said you were to enter if 
 you were embarrassed for money — and had hopes. 
 They would buy your hopes for the reality, your future 
 money for ready money counted down to you. The 
 operation finished, it comes out that you have sold your 
 wheat while green. With the hope of getting out of 
 an actual embarrassment you will have created worse 
 ones for the future. To fill a ditch you would have 
 opened an abyss. But some one will be happy, and that 
 is the proprietor of the booth. Needy, thin, embar- 
 rassed, you will have been well squeezed between his 
 hands, having furnished, with other poor wretches like 
 yourself, the means of fattening this honest industrial. 
 
 One could read many histories between the lines of 
 this little card. Sombre stories, always returning to 
 certain elements, always alike, monotonous dramas, 
 where the same actors always move about. This ticket 
 is the running noose thrown like a line of safety to one 
 who is about to drown ; it is to the fugitive seeking an 
 asylum, a brigand's cavern, in place of a shelter. A 
 man in the water sees the rope and seizes it ; a being in 
 distress behind whom enemies are tearing sees an open 
 door and precipitates himself within. Has he had time 
 to reflect whether he will gain by the change? 
 
 If you have no hopes to offer in merchandise, the 
 entry of that little office has no danger for you. You 
 will have no temptation to make bad debts, and for 
 good reason. 
 
 They receive you politely on your entry, it is true. 
 
132 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 You profit by the expenses made on the exploitable 
 clients. You will be met with a smile, like the sparrow 
 which gathers a few grains around the nets set for 
 partridges and wood-pigeons. But how much the face 
 presented to you on your entrance changes on your 
 first words ! No portfolio of office, not the least value 
 on paper to show, no life insurance, no deeds, no 
 effects, not even a pawn ticket ! And you have the 
 audacity to cross his threshold ! Why ? To have ready 
 money. Guaranteed by what ? By your honest face ? 
 A good joke. 
 
 The ferret does not lift his mustache in a more dis- 
 dainful fashion over a porcelain egg than the gentle- 
 man of this bureau does his disappointed lip. A catch, 
 then ! You have gone there to make him pose like a 
 rabbit. Your affair is soon settled, and the door which 
 closed behind you brusquely says things not waiting for 
 commentary. 
 
 Hurry, then, to throw the little card behind you with 
 its fallacious promise of money at once. Very soon 
 without that, you will hear a voice in your ear whisper : 
 "Did you think by hazard of entering a post of succor 
 for the unlucky ? What childishness ! But do not be 
 discouraged. Ready money — that exists somewhere for 
 you, but elsewhere. Who seeks, finds. You have no 
 papers to offer in exchange; but have you nothing to 
 sell ? A little of your honor, of conscience, of virtue, of 
 truth. What if you sold the reputation of your neigh- 
 bor ? One has confided a secret to you ; what if you 
 carried it to market ? You have a pen ; what if you 
 trafficked with it ? You are young, beautiful. That is 
 
THE VOICE OP NATURE. ^33 
 
 as valuable as a pawn ticket, a railroad bond, or the 
 expectation of an inheritance. Beat out gold with your 
 beauty, put your youth in a lottery, and the little card 
 would not be wrong in saying to you, 'Ready money/ 
 
 "If you have nothing to sell of any kind, seek other 
 things. Be an undoer of things. Do not allow your- 
 self to be without funds on that account. Go to the 
 sources. Explore the road to money drawers ; learn the 
 topography of strong-boxes. You need ready money. 
 There is plenty there. Surmount the distance that 
 separates you from it. Take and do not be taken. To 
 earn it by work is to be a dupe. It is too long, too 
 hard, too little remunerative, unworthy of a freeman. 
 Leave it to the blind spirits, slaves of that old foolish- 
 ness. Duty — leave them the decidedly old-fashioned 
 means of working for their money. Liberate yourself 
 boldly from vulgar prejudices. The term robber is a 
 silly bugbear which clever men invented to frighten 
 timid ones. For yourself, do not be a wet hen. Watch 
 the occasion, learn how to provoke it ; and if it delays, 
 and when it shows itself, jump on it. That is the law 
 and the prophets." 
 
 Astounded by such suggestions, you ask yourself: 
 Who, then, gave me that accursed ticket? You smell 
 to see if there is not an odor of sulphur in the air. 
 
 No, it is only printer's ink, acrid and penetrating. 
 And the poor man who gave it to you, from where did 
 he come? You pass by near him, and examine him 
 with a rather ridiculous distrust, thinking to see a 
 cloven foot, a hairy hand garnished with claws. But 
 no, it is an old man bent, and with an honest face. 
 
134 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 Well, in spite of that, be sure of the matter. That 
 formula, ready money, comes from a detestable office. 
 It is empoisoned, corrupting, and bears the mark which 
 you must defy, the mark of the tempter. 
 
 A NEW DIVINITY. 
 
 "In those days all the men were bicyclists or photog- 
 raphers and the multitude believed in aperients." Thus 
 some future historian can speak of us when we shall 
 have ceased for a long time to kill worms. 
 
 "They believed in aperients." That is just it. 
 
 The aperient is altogether a new divinity. She has 
 her temples, her priests, her faithful and receives sacri- 
 fices. No other .sanctuary is so much in vogue. The 
 office is never interrupted, night or day — the zealots 
 hasten there. Dense masses, always being renewed, 
 reach there chanting the introibo! 
 
 When people prepare themselves for war, they take 
 strong aperients to give themselves new strength. 
 When they conclude a peace, they take them to seal the 
 treaties. The harvest is great, and they rejoice with 
 aperients. Is bread dear? — they call an aperient in to 
 console themselves. Are you ill ? — take an aperient ; 
 it will cure you. Are you in good health? — take one 
 
THE VOICE OP NATURE. 135 
 
 without fail ; it will keep you so. The aperient is 
 good in the winter because it is cold, in summer be- 
 cause it is warm. It is suitable to drink at christen- 
 ings, so that the nurslings may prosper; at funerals, 
 that the dead may sleep in peace. 
 
 In ancient times nations occupied in founding colo- 
 nies, began by first installing their gods ; the moderns 
 by implanting their aperients there. To them be the 
 glory and honor ! 
 
 It is permitted us to find fault with kings, the pope, 
 national glories, even God. But a jealous throng 
 watches over the sacred aperient. They would sooner 
 allow essential liberties to. be taken from them, strips 
 of territory, than to give up the aperient. 
 
 It is becoming to scold when paying one's dues, and 
 it is a slave's practice to pay one's debts to-day instead 
 of putting them off until to-morrow. But, if the aperi- 
 ent takes your last penny, it is with enthusiasm and 
 without delay that we go and throw it on the zinc altar. 
 One forgets the hour for the train, of the post, of work, 
 but one does not forget the green hour of absinthe. 
 That the wife supplicates, that the child cries, that duty 
 calls, what of it? Cannot duty wait? The wife and 
 child, can they not wait in vain a while ? 
 
 Understood that the aperient does not wait. 
 
 In fact, the aperient is great and it reigns. 
 
 To gain such a faith, inspire that confidence, provoke 
 such sacrifices, what has this new divinity done? By 
 what miracles is its empire, justified? Aperient comes 
 from the Latin of aperire, to open. What does it open ? 
 Does it hold in its hand the golden key to happiness? 
 
136 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 Does it open the intelligence? Does it sharpen the ap- 
 petite? Do its worshippers have lighter hearts, richer 
 blood, stronger arms, brighter eyes, or a more solid 
 stomach? Are they able to work longer, be more 
 tenacious in wrestling, better fathers, and better sons, 
 better artisans or soldiers? Do they breathe through 
 their homes the benefits of the god they serve ? 
 
 The facts consulted answer this : The ones who 
 take aperients, in general have poor blood, their eyes 
 weak, and their members affected by a trembling more 
 or less pronounced. Their thoughts are dark. They 
 are inclined to a bad humor, haunted by melancholy. 
 
 In Germany they call those Macabre fantasies, vex- 
 ing or uncouth, which germ in their brain-cells, 
 Schnapsidee. I find that term very striking. 
 
 Certain thoughts, in fact, are comparable with the 
 impure vapors which rise on these mingled alcohols. 
 Natural wine has a toning effect, while clear water 
 clears the brain, but at the bottom of these greenish 
 cups, yellowish or brownish, where the aperients are 
 found, there is a whole world of lugubrious images, a 
 whole philosophy of pessimism. When one has the 
 mind befogged by alcoholic emanations, all energy is 
 destroyed, and gayety dies. One becomes a coward in 
 word and poltroon in combat, incapable of generous 
 effort. Once enervated and lessened, even at the very 
 sources of life, how can they become parents of fine 
 children? They are born old. A germ of precocious 
 decrepitude is in 'them. And what education can they 
 give them ? Between straying fathers and nervous sons, 
 what becomes of the calm good sense necessary to dis- 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 137 
 
 cipline? There is neither measure, authority nor re- 
 spect. From that arise continual rubbings, continual 
 exasperations. So the peace of the home is destroyed. 
 Prosperity follows the same road. It is moral and 
 material ruin. 
 
 The aperient is a divinity of misery. It does not 
 deserve the honors that they give it. All in it is decep- 
 tive, even the name. I deceive myself in this. For it 
 does not open the appetite, nor the mind, nor does it 
 open the doors of felicity, but it opens the doors of 
 insane asylums, of prisons and the galleys ; it opens the 
 mouth for injuries and foolishness, and it opens early 
 tombs. And, on the contrary, it closes access to many 
 honorable careers, closes hearts against kindness, the 
 intelligence to strong and useful thought, and bars the 
 road to social progress. 
 
 With what sort of insanity must one be attacked to 
 keep up the cult of such a goddess ! 
 
 If there existed in the world a tyrant whose govern- 
 ment would result in demeaning, soiling, making poor, 
 ugly and poisoning, as well as brutifying his subjects, a 
 tyrant whom one could not serve without reddening the 
 nose, destroying the stomach, darkening thought, vow- 
 ing his wife to misery, his children to epilepsy or tuber- 
 culosis, by what just and universal indignation would 
 not that monster be swept from the face of the earth? 
 
 But the aperient remains in full possession of his 
 reign. 
 
 The more his misdeeds augment, the more the num- 
 ber of his adepts become. 
 
 It is right; all has an end. Thrones crumble, tern* 
 
138 THE VOICE OP NATURE. 
 
 pies fall in ruins, the gods see their star pale and set. 
 The aperient will not escape the common law. 
 
 I rejoice in advance, and I drink to its death in a 
 glass of real French wine. 
 
 STREET SWEEPERS. 
 
 One often hears said, "Oh, this Paris !" much as they 
 might say, "Oh, this Sodom!" The exclamation is 
 common to some of our own people and some foreign- 
 ers. I want to say to them, "Let us distinguish. Of 
 which Paris are you speaking? There are many of 
 them." 
 
 Those who think of Paris as a city of perdition, think 
 of the small theatres, the cafe concerts, of Bullier, 
 whose striking facade of porcelain insults at one and 
 the same time the youth, the nation and art. They 
 think of certain corners of the Boulevard, at all the 
 vile underside of finance and politics, of the houses of 
 evil fame, the gambling dens, and I know not what 
 else. There is certainly enough there to make honest 
 men indignant. This indignation curls close to hypoc- 
 risy when those who manifest it are themselves clients 
 of these stigmatized places. Do they not profit by their 
 passage through Paris to go and see at close range what 
 happens there? 
 
 Two foreign D.D.'s, grave professors of the most 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 139 
 
 austere disciplines, met the other night, face to face, in 
 some "Black Cat." 
 
 "What! You here? What are you doing here?" 
 "I am studying Parisian manners. And you?" 
 My opinion is that there are already too many people 
 studying those manners, and experts in what is falsely 
 called Parisian manners. I am saturated with their 
 cries : "Oh, this Paris !" If I wished to be malicious 
 I would go and install myself in one of the little corners 
 and take snapshots which would pass for commenta- 
 ries. But that procedure is repugnant to me. Besides, 
 the sins of others do not efface ours. My neighbor's 
 wrong is mine because I believe in the human soli- 
 darity. 
 
 I permit myself only to propose another Paris for the 
 study of investigators of the really curious in manners 
 and not in scandals alone. Very well accustomed to 
 nocturnal Paris, they have never thought that there is a 
 matutinal existence in Paris, most admirable and un- 
 known to those idlers who go to sleep at one o'clock 
 and rise at noon. 
 
 Among all those workers of Paris at daylight I dis- 
 tinguish the sweepers. The sweeper seems invested 
 with a sort of royalty whose sceptre is the broom, and 
 which brings into still higher relief in my eyes the 
 blade of philosophy inherent in the trade. The sweeper 
 rises in the very earliest morning, in all weathers. At 
 four o'clock he reigns in the city. Sweeping up so 
 many things he has come to have serious features, like 
 those who bend by habit over the problems of life. It 
 is a high lesson to find oneself always facing the re- 
 
140 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 mains of that which was the pleasure of the world and 
 its joy. 
 
 When the lights are put out and the places empty, 
 the songs and toasts terminated, the sweeper comes. 
 
 To him fall the broken glasses, the faded bouquets, 
 all the withered vestiges of festivals and feasts. 
 
 When sovereigns travel, or the presidents and their 
 ministers, after the fanfares, and the deputations, the 
 speeches and banquets, among the stripped trophies and 
 the garlands whose flowers are falling, the word be- 
 longs to the street sweeper. 
 
 The day after elections, he walks on a litter of bulle- 
 tins, and nothing equals the electoral fever if it is not 
 the calm of this broom which pushes them along con- 
 founded in the same dust, the names of the victors or 
 the beaten. 
 
 After the carnival, as after the riot, after the heads- 
 man even, make way for the sweeper. According to 
 the days he sweeps up many colored confetti, or washes 
 away blood. 
 
 At this trade, whosoever knows how to see and think 
 becomes a sage. He has before his eyes documentary 
 proofs of all that has taken place the night before. 
 
 Nothing escapes him, not even the details of the 
 kitchen. At the doorsteps they guess the bill of fare of 
 the inhabitants. What a contrast between that which 
 is swept from the faubourg Saint Antoine and the 
 faubourg Saint Honore, or on the plains of Monceau ! 
 The whole social question lies there. 
 
 History is not found in newspapers alone, diplomatic 
 correspondences or on the bronze or marble of monu- 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 141 
 
 ments. Among the most significant documents are 
 those gleaned in the streets. What does that heavy cart 
 carry, loaded with the detritus of our modern cities? 
 Those who do not see with the mind's eye, will behold 
 only broken bottles, stumps of vegetables, old hats and 
 strips of lace mingled with a lobster's shell. I say to 
 you that the cart carries our archives. It is full of that 
 which accuses or justifies us, of that which threatens us 
 or sustains us. 
 
 Some persons predict the future by coffee grounds. 
 A prophetic sweeper will predict it far more truly in 
 turning over one of those famous boxes which bear the 
 names of an ambassador. 
 
 I stopped the other day before one of those curious 
 columns covered with posters of some theatre, and I 
 made some pessimistic reflections, suggested by tainted 
 things which I will not transcribe. And, like a vulgar 
 bourgeois, I was on the point of asking myself, "What 
 are we coming to ?" when the sweeper came to the side- 
 walk where I was standing. He put a key into the pad- 
 lock fixed on the column and opened a door. Then in 
 the interior I saw a complete panoply. Old brooms, 
 new brooms, rakes and broom handles. On a nail hung 
 a nozzle for sprinkling. And, hung side by side, near 
 each other, like inseparable companions, a small lantern 
 and a pair of gutter boots. 
 
 At this sight my courage was animated anew. All is 
 right, I thought. On the column is spread that which 
 soils, and inside all that is needful to clean it is found. 
 What an admirable symbol of our Parisian life, full of 
 the most shocking contrasts ! Oh, this Paris ! It also 
 
142 THE VOICE OP NATURE. 
 
 holds within itself the means of purification. And I 
 said to myself as I looked at the honest brooms and the 
 heavy boots : "When will come he who will be able to 
 wear those boots, and with a triumphant sweep of his 
 broom push all that impudent filth into the gutter?" 
 
 EXTRA HORSES. 
 
 In the times when the great highways had not yet 
 been dethroned by the railroads, when coaches, dili- 
 gences, relays and those good old inns now lost to us 
 still existed, there were in these roads where accidents 
 were so liable to happen a multitude of extra horses. 
 A board affixed along the walk indicated the exact place 
 where one must hitch them on or unhitch. And all day 
 long and every day there was a defile of horses going 
 towards the stable or their work. 
 
 To-day this institution has disappeared from its 
 primitive frame. The highways no longer have extra 
 horses. It is rare that one now finds one in the rough- 
 est provinces, like, for instance, that part of Lorraine 
 backed by the Vosges, where the capricious roads give 
 their measure after the extravagant cascades. 
 
 "From the height of the jump, the depth of the falls." 
 
 The extra horse has taken the road of the great cities, 
 like many peasants. In Paris they are found by the rue 
 
THE VOICE OP NATURE. 14$ 
 
 de Clichy, the rue des Martyrs, the boulevard Saint 
 Michel, all the roads that climb the butte of Mont- 
 martre, the hill of Sainte Genevieve, and no matter 
 what other Parisian hill. Wherever you see a bridge 
 with a back rounded up like that of a cat, everywhere 
 where there is an improvised incline, an extra horse is 
 in readiness. It is the deus ex machina which is to 
 help the overloaded omnibus, or the tramway, too well 
 filled in this hurried century, where they must not stay 
 eternally on one spot, or the travellers get down and 
 push the wheels according to the precedent set by La 
 Fontaine. 
 
 The extra horse is never alone, but is followed by a 
 man called pilot, who is neither coachman nor groom, 
 and for whom in his moments of respite he serves as 
 bench, table or bed, unless he has his patient back en- 
 gaged for a game of cards improvised by the others. 
 
 When a heavy and overloaded wagon reaches the 
 given point the driver prepares his whip, and the pilot 
 does the same. 
 
 These two whippers cross their fires to stimulate the 
 auxiliary. As to the two regular horses they exploit 
 the extra horse with the aim of sparing themselves a 
 little. The destiny of an extra horse is hard. If he 
 has a double ration of blows, perhaps he has had but 
 half a ration of oats or care. The whole equipage 
 counts on him, but he counts for very little himself. 
 In general he is old, foundered, and badly curried. 
 Through open wounds on his skin the raw flesh can be 
 seen. It is an old creature, of little value. The 
 knacker is waiting for him ; the butcher does not want 
 
144 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 him. Under rain, wind and snow he goes, stiffening 
 his worn-out legs to gain a little strength in them. Or 
 perhaps he stands in the cold, half-frozen and half- 
 asleep, drooping his head and waiting until a heavy 
 blow awakes him. Melancholy end for a career of 
 labor! If the extra horse thought or could speak in 
 intelligible words what he suffers in his obscurity, what 
 sombre pictures would his brute's soul portray ! 
 
 Too many men resemble him, of whom he is the 
 symbol : those who are at their forced labor, never at 
 rest and never honored; stop-gaps called everywhere 
 where there is a collar to pull, a cart to get out of the 
 mire; men of heavy labors, which no regular work- 
 man will undertake, and for whom they must be like a 
 torn volume or spavined horse or broken vessel. Of 
 these sacrificed beings there are to be found in all 
 countries. One does not notice their presence ; they do 
 not exist in a way. It never comes into the mind of any 
 one that they could fear or hope for anything. Having 
 nothing to expect, they have nothing to risk. One can 
 ask everything of them, send them everywhere, expose 
 them to everything. Fear of contagions, injuries, death 
 or dishonor is only for settled people, whose existence 
 has a price and a sweetness, who have the means of self- 
 esteem. The others cannot pay for this luxury. 
 
 Therefore let them do what no other will, and go 
 where the most courageous would hesitate. When they 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 145 
 
 shall be dead of it, we will not have to thank them. 
 Towards certain ones, one is delivered from all consid- 
 eration, even gratitude. Their function is to pay for 
 others, their reason for being. 
 
 My soul is fascinated by these patient ones, on whom 
 all these burdens fall. The more I fix my eyes upon the 
 shadow where they vegetate, the more I distinguish a 
 superhuman light. If they are nothing, what are we? 
 what is life ? what the universe ? 
 
 You make me think of those poor extra horses. That 
 is why, of all the coursers of the city, you interest me 
 the most. How many times you have made me dream ! 
 In spite of myself, in seeing you, I think of the invisible 
 eye which sees these mute pains, and the crushings of 
 which no one takes notice. This eye is upon you, it 
 sounds the depths of your martyrdom, and something 
 tells me that even in your shadows He sees a breaking 
 dawn. 
 
 MORNING BELLS. 
 
 I have a brother to ring for my early Mass, a valiant 
 brother who never misses the hour. He has neither 
 tonsure nor scapular, but two solid arms, with bronzed 
 
146 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 muscles, and a large leathern apron. His bell is an 
 anvil ; for he is a blacksmith, my brother. 
 
 In early dawn, his hammer rings, rings — like a 
 rooster's crowing, like the cry of a swallow. Half- 
 awake, I hear him. The blows are firm and hard. It 
 is not the hammer of a sleeper, working in spite of him- 
 self, filled with regret for his bed. It is a hammer that 
 sings at its work and gives you a desire for it. It says : 
 "The pokers were sleeping in the ashes ; but the'bellows 
 aroused them. The live embers have set fire to the coal. 
 On the black hearth, in the closed chimney, the iron at 
 a white heat glows like a star. Hammer it while it is 
 hot. It is the hour to forge it. The horse awaits his 
 shoes, the farmer his plough, the workman his tools, the 
 soldier his sword. Let us forge, forge the implements 
 of labor — the arms for future battles." 
 
 What do you want of me, hammer, brother of 
 clarions and drums ? There are appeals in your voice, 
 rallying cries. I hear — you tell me of the holy work, 
 of the great daily labor. 
 
 You tell me that there is iron to beat into shape, arms 
 to prepare. Now outcasts sleep, the men of pleasure 
 beat a retreat, and with the shadows will disappear 
 swarms of night walkers. This is the hour to come out 
 for the labors of daylight, the hour to blow up the 
 sparkling cinders which lie waiting to revive on the 
 hearth by the cool breath of the bellows. 
 
 The city is stirred in a vague murmur. The mason 
 takes his trowel, the sweeper his broom, the thinker 
 reknots his ideas of yesterday. Each one thinks of his 
 function. Let us think of ours. There are stains to 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. \tf 
 
 wash away, injuries to repair, tears to dry, shadows to 
 dissipate, chains to break, wounded to lift up, innocents 
 to defend, injustices to destroy, lies to confound. The 
 old human misery, earlier than the birds, is awake long 
 ere this. Already the slaves hear the whip of the op- 
 pressor whistle in the air. The sick are suffering from 
 their ailments, the afflicted with their sorrow. Agoniz- 
 ing problems rise before the men who awaken. 
 
 With all that the wicked to-day will not abstain from 
 labor. Deceivers will build their ambushes, the cor- 
 rupters will distil their poison, men of discord will come 
 to enliven their quarrels, and fanatics launch their 
 anathemas. 
 
 Tartuffe will invent a new imposture, Basil will try 
 an unpublished calumny. Men of prey will not lose one 
 mouthful, nor the chatterboxes one word, nor the mon- 
 grel dogs one bite. 
 
 Shall we leave the field to them ? Up, belt and buckle 
 ourselves, put on our aprons. Where are you, then, my 
 faithful hammer? 
 
 A voice often says: "Stay in bed. Your pains are 
 useless. The evil is too formidable, the shadow too 
 thick. Your pigmy work will not prevail against that 
 of the giant. Stay in bed, sleep peacefully, and in this 
 wicked world make the least bile possible; it will be 
 neither worse nor better, and you will at least have 
 gained a few quiet hours. That is so much won from 
 the enemy." 
 
 But, down there in the forge, the indefatigable ham- 
 mer falls and rises. "Do not listen," it says, "to that 
 voice which invites you to repose and disdain effort. It 
 
148 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 is the voice of the tempter ; the deceptive voice of doubt 
 and indifference, those eternal accomplices of all crimes. 
 Strike the iron ! There is nothing else in the rising sun, 
 the bursting bourgeon, the bounding torrent. Strike 
 the iron, strike the iron ! God loves the valiant. The 
 fiery spark which springs from the anvil lightens the 
 morning of the sunniest days." 
 
 Have I not a good brother to thus ring for me in the 
 mornings ? 
 
 LESSON OF LABOR. 
 
 The Boulevard is very much animated. It is the 
 middle of the day. An extraordinary movement reigns 
 on pavement and sidewalk. In the midst of this go and 
 come, two workmen were occupied in repairing the line 
 of the tramway. They were safeguarded by two wheel- 
 barrows placed one at each extremity of his field of 
 labor. A small red flag warned drivers. 
 
 And there, under the horses' feet, they soldered the 
 rails, tightened the bolts, corrected the inequalities of 
 the surface, relaid the worn-out parts of the wooden 
 pavement. At every moment the horn of a car notified 
 them that it was time to get out of the way. They took 
 one step aside to let the car pass, and then resumed 
 their labor immediately. 
 
 They must not lose a moment. Between two wagons 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 149 
 
 which followed each other closely they found time to 
 go and settle a stone or tighten a screw. If they wished 
 to put their hands on a longer piece of work, it was a 
 whole calculation. Otherwise they would obstruct the 
 way and raise tempests among that noisy tribe of free- 
 men. 
 
 And, while the rails are free, and work is possible, 
 they are forbidden to look right or left. For them pass- 
 ers do not exist. Wagons circulate, coachmen vocifer- 
 ate, horses run away, gamins and drunken men dispute 
 — they never lift their heads. They appear to be deaf, 
 but they must listen under pain of being crushed ; blind, 
 yet with the eyes everywhere. Others, in working, 
 throw their tools here and there, and toss the materials 
 around apparently at hazard. These cannot make one 
 movement that is not the result of the closest attention. 
 If they place their materials carelessly, or let a shovel 
 lie about, or a fragment of wood, just as soon there will 
 be some grave accident, a horse injured, a wagon 
 broken or upset. 
 
 Singular conditions under which to work, are they 
 not ? Not everybody could maintain them. Certain men 
 need silence and calm to work. Others go still farther 
 in their requirements. Before they will go to work 
 everything around them must be in order. Every one 
 must retire and nobody move in the house. They are a 
 long time at their complicated installation. They ar- 
 range their table, put in symmetry all the objects that 
 garnish it, stop the clock whose tick-tack annoys them. 
 After that and several other supplementary precautions, 
 they begin. 
 
150 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 I am not ignorant, however, of the importance of the 
 frame where the traveller is placed. So many things 
 have an influence on the mind. It is worth while to 
 surround oneself with precautions when one wishes to 
 achieve a work worth while. Silence — what a benefac- 
 tor for the thinker, the artist ! and how sad is the lot of 
 the worker delivered over to importunate ones, of one's 
 labors upset by idlers on account of everything and 
 nothing ! To be at the mercy of the door bell, what a 
 slave ! 
 
 In the bosom of conflicts being ceaselessly renewed, 
 between the need of gathering oneself together and the 
 brutal irruption of perturbing forces, one surprises 
 oneself, wishing for a quiet cell, a few planks, a roof of 
 brush, one window giving out on some clearing at the 
 end of the woods, where one would see nobody and 
 where one might once in a while see a sportive kid or 
 hear a blackbird. There the hours would pass smooth- 
 ly, without crack or tear, and one would have for the 
 struggles of the spirit seeking to explain itself the 
 patient aid of vast days, which nothing crosses nor 
 divides. 
 
 And, still I admire those pavers who toil in such con- 
 fusion, always interrupted and always recommencing. 
 Whosoever would fill his function must resemble them. 
 For it is life to be hurried, troubled, disarranged by the 
 enemy and to know how to work in spite of all. Per- 
 haps even the individual needs this perpetual stimulant, 
 and would wear out sooner in a too complete calm than 
 in the ardent shock of beings and things. 
 
 You dream an unknown temple. Who tells you that 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 151 
 
 soon, in place of working, you will not have one of 
 those famous sleeps, of which old convents, and certain 
 modern administrations, know the secret and have for 
 symbol a shaved head lying on a pillow of a folio 
 volume ? 
 
 One must reach a point where one can gather oneself 
 in a great scene of activity, to establish a solitude in 
 the midst of activity. If you wait for everything to be 
 in its place and in order, to get to work, as the chief of 
 the orchestra waits to give the signal until they hush 
 in the audience for every musician to be at his instru- 
 ment, you will greatly risk the losing of your life while 
 preparing to live. So many things league against useful 
 labor— enemies from outside, noise, derangements, un- 
 foreseen events both public and private. Enemies in- 
 side, fears, passions, spiritual carelessness. You would 
 at first that your enemies would keep silence, that your 
 sorrows be appeased, your inquietudes be calmed, the 
 problems of politics, philosophy and religion should be 
 resolved. At that account when will you begin ? 
 
 Go and learn from the obscure laborers accomplish- 
 ing their duty in the midst of the least propitious con- 
 ditions. If it does not please you to owe a lesson to 
 these humble ones of the earth, ask the powerful ones, 
 the statesmen obliged to juggle with the hours, to con- 
 quer a little of the time due to public affairs, to snatch 
 it strip by strip from solicitors of every kind and class, 
 to ceaselessly interrupt the gravest labors and the most 
 pressing ones for a banquet, a ceremony, or in fact to 
 ignore that encumbering something pretentious and 
 empty which they call a summons. 
 
152 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 THE HAND. 
 
 We admire the bird's wing and with reason ; its con- 
 struction is amazing. And, besides, it represents so 
 well one of the essential aspirations of our being, to go, 
 to quit the narrow bounds where we vegetate, to spring 
 off into free spaces. But, what is the wing of a bird 
 compared to the hand of a man? As a marvel of 
 mechanism, the hand surpasses that by a whole im- 
 mensity. We must have admired many ingenious dis- 
 coveries in the world of machines to measure by com- 
 parison the restrained circle of their functions and the 
 royal opulence of these filled by the hand of man. The 
 number of combinations that our hands can execute is 
 immeasurable. The hand is absolutely indispensable to 
 the mind. If we had no hands the mind would be of 
 little utility to us. And the hand gives its measure of 
 usefulness, but under the direction of the mind. When 
 it executes the orders of others it loses a great part of 
 its capacity, and if we could ever make a mechanical 
 hand imitate its perfection we would be able only to 
 produce in that copy, even then so difficult, nothing but 
 automatic movements, stamped with awkward stiff- 
 ness. 
 
 The hand has a physiognomy. Some say that it is an 
 oracle, that its lines, its form and proportions form a 
 part of an occult writing, unfolding the future to those 
 who know how to decipher the secret. The art of 
 reading that writing has attracted many persons, and 
 made them commit many errors and injustices. How 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 153 
 
 shall we continue to give our confidence to a man in 
 whose hand is written perfidy, robbery or murder ? 
 
 While keeping a complete reserve before the preten- 
 sions of any one's ability to read our character and our 
 future in the hollow of our hand, I must admit that its 
 physiognomy is very speaking. Painters have gained 
 much from that fact. In many pictures hands have put 
 extraordinary action. I am also much struck with all 
 which they represent in life. 
 
 Some hands are frightful. One would say they were 
 made to strangle with. 
 
 Long, emaciated with the old miser, they seem the 
 incarnation of an insatiable and rapacious soul. Some, 
 when they are laid in yours, seem as though they 
 would avoid yours, have a serpentine movement, invit- 
 ing you to distrust them. But how the grasp of a loyal 
 hand comforts us ! Does it not seem that it gives us a 
 salutary shock of force and courage ? 
 
 The hand is soft, caressing, consoling. It binds 
 wounds, wipes away tears. It is that also which gives. 
 Jesus has defined the discreet charity in saying : "Let 
 not your left hand know what the right hand doeth. ,, 
 
 The hand is violent, aggressive. It strikes, seizes, 
 mistreats. Transformed into a fist it becomes a sledge 
 to kill with. David said : "Do not let me fall into the 
 hands of men.' , And certainly one can explain this cry, 
 thinking of all the things that hands can do of evil. The 
 vulture's claws and those of a tiger are children's play- 
 things in comparison. No instrument of torture has 
 ever reached their height. Cold, pitiless, they seize 
 their prey, crush it, and immolate it without a tremor. 
 
154 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 It tears, wrinkles, bruises, breaks; covers itself with 
 blood and is intoxicated with vengeance. 
 
 Look at your hands ! See whether they are pure or 
 impure, violent or beneficent, prompt to be lifted for a 
 blow, or to be held out in pardon, whether they prefer 
 to close over gifts given them or to open and give lib- 
 erally. What usage do you make of those marvelous 
 tools constructed by God? Your principal care, is it 
 to keep them very white and virgin of all traces of 
 labor ? 
 
 Among all hands, I love and venerate those of the 
 good old women who have toiled much. A long his- 
 tory of active goodness is written on them. They speak 
 of caresses given to little children, of long evenings 
 passed in sewing, of cares bestowed lovingly on the 
 sick. Hands wrinkled by age, hands so thin that the 
 blue veins may be seen, let me honor you with a filial 
 kiss. For you are the loved hands of our mothers, the 
 image of the eternal tenderness, and when, trembling, 
 you lay them on our heads in blessing, something has 
 entered in you of the Hand that holds the worlds. 
 
 DISCOURAGEMENT. 
 
 It was on a misty day in a morose spring. My steps 
 led me to a distant suburb where Paris becomes prov- 
 ince. I was seeking there a man whom I knew to be sad 
 
THE VOICE OP NATURE. ^55 
 
 and almost mentally deranged. These things happen 
 to everybody. No one is sheltered from unhappy hours. 
 Happily, they do not all come upon us at once, and he 
 who4s on his feet and feeling very well can help his 
 brother to rise again and continue on his way. Soon I 
 had passed the threshold of a vast garden, humid still 
 with the last shower. Green mosses covered the tree 
 trunks ; the ground under my feet ceded with the pres- 
 sure of them. Everywhere conquering bushes and 
 victorious weeds. Besides, here and there was a trace 
 of a little cultivation : a spade standing upright in the 
 ground awaiting the gardener's hand. I found him 
 occupied in cleaning the old tunnel where wild vines, 
 honeysuckle and clematis fell in avalanches and bent 
 the arches of the sodden wood. Under the tunnel there 
 was a bench near a stone table, both garnished with 
 moss. Perhaps long ago people had laughed and sung 
 in this place, but it must have been long ago, and it 
 seemed as if they would never recommence. 
 
 The dull sky, this sombre, verdure which no ray of 
 light pierced, chilled the heart. 
 
 Observing my presence, the silent worker shook 
 down the mass of dead leaves and dry branches which 
 he was stirring around pell-mell and came to shake my 
 hand. 
 
 "Well, how goes everything?" 
 
 "Nothing goes at all. It is finished, all finished. I 
 am good for nothing any more. It would be better if I 
 were out of the world." 
 
 Sad words those. Sadder than them was the face 
 of the speaker — pale, emaciated, framed in a black 
 
156 THB VOICE OP NATURE. 
 
 beard making his pale features appear still paler. And 
 the depths of his sunken eyes, eyes filled with shadow, 
 was a lack of lustre like burned-out coal. He began to 
 tell me his life, his labors — the life of a brave man and 
 a valiant one ; a noble existence entirely upright, full of 
 kindness and also a simple confidence in God, in spite 
 of rude trials. Then had come days of sorrow, bad 
 ones, disconcerting ones, of bitter experiences of the 
 baseness, cowardice, deceptions of men, financial losses 
 due to bad faith, heart-breaking law suits, and after all 
 that inaction, the impossibility at a somewhat advanced 
 age to find another employ. 
 
 Above all, the inaction weighed upon him. He ate 
 his own heart out night and day, delivered over as he 
 was to the same recollections, and he had ended by be- 
 coming completely demoralized. 
 
 Nothing is more painful than to see a good man with 
 a firm and worthy heart, reduced to this state. My 
 sympathy touched him, my sympathetic words made 
 him smile. It was as if I was trying to wind a watch 
 whose mainspring was broken. And I went down with 
 this torn and overweighted soul in the abysses of deso- 
 lation where there is no light shining. 
 
 At this moment we passed by a great bed of straw- 
 berries. The vigorous roots loaded with blossoms 
 seemed to promise an abundant harvest. Mechanically 
 we stopped to look at them, and I complimented him on 
 their fine appearance. 
 
 "Just listen," he answered ; "you will scarcely believe 
 it, but these vines I saved from the dung heap. My 
 neighbor, the gardener, threw them on the pile. I asked 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 157 
 
 him to give them to me and see what they have be- 
 come." 
 
 "That is very interesting to know, and it must give 
 you pleasure. To save something which is lost is 
 always a comforting action. Yet, I cannot but think 
 of you when I see these thrifty plants which you saved 
 from a bunch of refuse. For, in fact, at this moment 
 are you not about to throw yourself away? You could 
 not bear to see a plant thrown away in which you 
 thought there might be the germ of life. You take it, 
 plant in good soil and watch it prosper with a tender 
 heart, and you are ready to go and throw yourself in 
 the place from whence you saved them ! Go on, go on ! 
 We are worth more than a strawberry plant; never 
 admit that you are good for nothing. Do you know 
 what invisible, good and clement gardener may come 
 and set dry our roots in a fertile soil, animate our with- 
 ered leaves and ask us to bear fruit once more ? Let us 
 rest at His disposal." 
 
 He did not answer, but I thought that his large and 
 gentle eyes, fixed on the green plants, took on a new 
 lustre and that he applied the lesson for which he had 
 unwittingly prepared the elements. 
 
 LABORS FOR THE FUTURE. 
 
 A gray fog enveloped the earth. Men and beasts 
 slid through it like shadows. One vaguely saw the 
 nearest roofs, the nearest trees. Beyond that — nothing ! 
 Noise comes from this fog. One hears that something 
 
158 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 is going on. But that something is uncertain, and the 
 noise is deadened. The cries of men, the hoofs of 
 horses, the wheels of different vehicles, the distant 
 whistling of locomotives, come to me as though 
 through cotton. No clear ray, no vibrating sound 
 comes to save us from those lugubrious impressions. 
 And, insinuating itself clear into our lungs and our 
 blood, this flabby air, loaded with frigid vapors, seems 
 to labor to lessen us. Will it be thus towards the end 
 of the aging world, when the sun, slowly grown cold, 
 will no longer be able to dissipate the darkness, and 
 our anemic descendants will achieve their mournful 
 existence in the bosom of conquering shadows? By 
 what I feel in this end of November I can account for 
 that which will then happen. How much better if, 
 instead of this supreme miasma, the earth, bursting like 
 a bomb, would end its last day in a grand display of 
 fireworks ! 
 
 I rolled over in my befogged mind these thoughts of 
 certainly inferior quality, when my eyes fell upon the 
 sign of my friend, the manufacturer of hats. What if 
 I went up there ? The damp stone stairs to the work- 
 room led me after two stories into a vast place full of 
 light and activity. I expected to find everybody buried 
 among felt and fur hats. Not a bit of it. It was on 
 straw hats that they were working, yachting caps, shep- 
 herdess hats, planters' hats, bathing hats, Charlottes, 
 fresh and coquettish headgear made gay with ribbons 
 and flowers. 
 
 Still under the impressions of the street, this specta- 
 cle shocked me like an anachronism. 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 159' 
 
 "You are rather late in getting off your summer hats. 
 That is what you are doing, is it not?" 
 
 "Pardon, sir ; we are preparing for next season. Our 
 
 travellers are to leave in a few davs. It is in the midst 
 
 *■ • 
 
 of December that they go to show the models to the 
 retail dealers for the coming summer. Would you like 
 to see them ?" 
 
 It seemed to me little in conformity with my present 
 humor to lower my eyes to these futilities. But, one 
 should never discourage any one in his work, and 
 mechanically I set myself to pass in review all these 
 fragile splendors. As I looked my interest awakened. 
 Laughing faces appeared to my vision under these hats. 
 Blue horizons, sunny beaches, flowery paths furnished 
 the frames for the faces. I was soon under the charm, 
 and each one of the graceful bows which took form 
 under the agile fingers of the workers, took the charac- 
 ter of a symbol of hope. "Go on," I said to myself in 
 taking leave of these laborious friends, "there are still 
 beautiful days in the future." 
 
 In the street, on the imperial of a tramcar I saw a 
 man holding between his knees a young tree with vig- 
 orous roots. He came from the flower market doubt- 
 less and was going to some place in the suburbs. Here 
 was another who did not philosophize on the end of the 
 world. Across this foggy and mournful hour he, too, 
 saw warm to-morrows. He contemplated in advance 
 the branches of his apple tree, the bunches of blossoms 
 where swarms of bees buzzed happily, and the future in 
 its warm light pierced the fog of the present. 
 
 Oh, the comforting lessons! Peace be to all those 
 
160 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 who offer us similar ones on our often dark roads. 
 They are forms of confidence in God, all these labors 
 for the future, in spite of the discouraging visage of 
 the passing hour. Do not look on that face too often 
 nor with a too anxious eye. Let us work, sow, plant, 
 believe in the God of to-morrow. Let us deliver our 
 souls to the strengthening suggestions of hope, and not 
 to the demoralizing nightmares of pessimism. We can 
 never hear too much of it. All thought that is too dark 
 and sombre is stained with error. Truth is not dark. 
 I admire those prophets who in the middle of the night 
 predict the daylight, in the midst of death announce 
 life. And you, also, I salute you, humble workers, who 
 call us to ©rder by no matter what sign, what gesture, 
 what labor done for the future, where thrifty hope has 
 set its seal. 
 
 ASSOCIATED MISERIES. 
 
 In the sharp winds of autumn, under the fine rain 
 which lashed the dead leaves, I saw on a street of old 
 Caen a leafless shrub which was covered by a ragged 
 umbrella without handle. And, struck by such a curi- 
 ous assembly, I tried to reconstruct in my mind the 
 scene of which this must have been the result. 
 
 The morning of the day when this event took place 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 1G1 
 
 the sky was radiant. None could have anticipated such 
 a bad ending. The trees over the promenade moved 
 lightly in the breeze, and sent back and forth their 
 accustomed salutes to old acquaintances. Near the 
 veterans accustomed to storms, under the place left 
 empty by the fall of a giant in the last wintry battle, a 
 young willow spread its tender green twigs. It had 
 the glorious air of a mite of a boy, showing in the sun- 
 shine the splendors of his first pair of pantaloons. 
 
 Poor little thing, they had planted it in a bad place, 
 in the way of all the winds. There exist predestined 
 spots, true cross-roads of storms, where the draughts 
 rage; in their ferocity they engulf the place with tor- 
 rents of rain or bury it in drifts of snow. When one 
 occupies such a post one is marked for misery. 
 
 Now, on the evening of this fine day, the inevitable 
 storm arrived. In a twinkling it had robbed the willow 
 of its fragile crown, sowing far and near its pretty 
 leaves but lately opened. Near there a passer-by strug- 
 gled against the hard wind, with a span new umbrella 
 guaranteed unbreakable. In less time than it takes us 
 to tell it, the frightful storm had turned it inside out, 
 torn the silk from the ribs and left the man streaming 
 with water, stupefied, holding the handle of an umbrella 
 gripped in his hands, which was nothing now but a 
 souvenir. - 
 
 In payment for its loss the little tree found itself 
 bonneted with a ragged protector, covering it and 
 seeming to wish to shelter it. 
 
 Deep game of hazard! This mutilated trunk shel- 
 
162 T HE VOICE OP NATURE. 
 
 tered beneath a spoil of destiny had I know not what of 
 touching grace which engraved itself in my memory. 
 Two miseries met there, two wrecks joined to complete 
 each other. The same wind that had injured the little 
 tree and lacerated the umbrella had brought them 
 together, giving them at once the value of a deep 
 symbol. 
 
 It is thus in this world that there are men whom 
 misery brings together. Happy, they would never have 
 known each other. But in falling their lives are min- 
 gled. The ruins of their happiness, leaning together, 
 end by forming, as among the ruins of some edifices, 
 groupings more durable than were the primitive walls. 
 
 THE SHOE. 
 
 The Seine had raised waves ! In the cold wind of 
 January, floods pressing on floods rolled their proud 
 foam and seemed to intend to mount the piles of the 
 bridges. For me, idle riverman, having seen in the 
 middle of August the same flood so fast asleep that one 
 could not have told whether it flowed towards Auteuil 
 or Charenton, such a movement was a feast to the 
 eyes. 
 
 All right, thought I. With us also in the winter, 
 
f HE3 VOICfi OF NATURE. ±($ 
 
 when there is much water, the old Heraclite might have 
 placed his famous saying, "One never descends the 
 same river twice," and this saying filled me with pleas- 
 ure. 
 
 But I was soon drawn out of that inoffensive reverie 
 by the apparition of an object floating on the waters. 
 It came from above, near the confines of Bercy — a black 
 spot, growing larger every instant. And, when it was 
 close enough to see it well, I found that it was an old 
 shoe; but a shoe in some respects better than many 
 new ones, for it was impervious to water. The proof 
 was that it swam obstinately. It was in the position of 
 a shoe on a man's foot, the heel turned towards Ivry, 
 and the toe towards Saint Cloud, and it advanced on 
 the water with a very sure manner. It mounted and 
 descended according to the movement of the waves. 
 Now it made large steps when in the yellow rolling 
 waters of the Bateaux Parisiens, again jumping onto 
 the innumerable crests of the short chopping waves. 
 
 Really this shoe hypnotized me, and having no rea- 
 son that day to go east or west, I set myself to walk 
 along the quays in the same sense as the shoe. But I 
 had not gone one hundred yards before there came to 
 ! me such a mass of ideas ; and I put to myself many 
 contradictory questions. 
 
 Is there anything as suggestive as the old shoes that 
 one finds along the hedges of a country road? They 
 recall the destinies of men on the changing roads of 
 life. Where are they who wore them ? Are they asleep 
 beneath the sod? Have they forever taken off their 
 
164 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 pilgrim's sandals, or do they use other soles on other 
 roads ? 
 
 Where may this shoe not have walked? What has 
 become of his mate? For shoes always go in twos, 
 unless indeed they form a pendant to a wooden leg. 
 Has it beaten the pavements of cities, turned furrows 
 behind harrow and plow, or hurtled down the old oaks 
 and made the dead leaves rustle in the distant clear- 
 ings? 
 
 Perhaps, I said, this shoe on the foot of some brave 
 man has faced the enemy's fire or climbed in the as- 
 sault. 
 
 Or maybe it took service on the foot of a deserter, 
 who lost it in his wild race. For, in fact, there are 
 shoes and shoes. Is it proved to me that that shoe 
 belonged to an honest man and not to one of those 
 chevaliers of industry, a burglar, a criminal perhaps, 
 having left its imprint in some place suspected by the 
 judge of instruction? 
 
 No matter ; it is now on its way to where the shoes 
 of other days have gone, but by a royal road. It pays 
 its passage through Paris, and in passing Notre Dame 
 and the Louvre it salutes them. This retired one of 
 the great whirlpool of life makes me attentive to its 
 fellows — the shoes of the day. On the quays, on the 
 bridges, across the Parisian immensity, on the feet of 
 busy people, I saw them walking in all senses : run to 
 work, or pleasure ; jump along the scholar's road ; slip 
 behind the wings of chicanery or politics ; groan in the 
 hall of the Pas Perdues, in the mournful ante-chambers 
 where the solicitors watch for the bureaucrat ; stumble 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. ][g5 
 
 over orange peels; follow behind a sombre hearse to 
 the cemetery, with a measured step. 
 
 And I cannot prevent myself from asking this ques- 
 tion, "What will remain of all its uneasy travels ?" The 
 answer I find in the unmated shoe, philosopher without 
 knowing it, tanned by all the winds. It told me, "The 
 same destiny awaits them. They may fight against it 
 with swiftness and rank ; their end is the same. Aristo- 
 cratic red heels, gold-embroidered satin slippers, 
 buskins or brodekins, luxurious bottines, and iron-shod 
 overshoes, the pope's slippers, and emperor's boots — 
 all go the same road, driven by an invisible and power- 
 ful hand." 
 
 These reflections made me melancholy. Over- 
 whelmed by the burden of human vanities, and the ster- 
 ile agitations where we lose our lives, I remained a 
 long time with my elbows on the parapet, following the 
 shoe still floating down the river. It seemed to be full 
 of spirit as though it dreamed of some dainty sabot 
 accustomed to the flowery paths of Normandy, which 
 it would soon rejoin between the green banks where 
 the young colts bound. And, besides, it seemed abso- 
 lutely indifferent to all that I might think of it. 
 
 It was, however, all that I wished to retain of it. In 
 these times of passions and calumnies no one is above 
 suspicion; each one anxiously wonders what "they" 
 think of him, say or write about him. Would it not be 
 a benefit to be able to pass through this life without 
 fretting over the opinion of people, any more than the 
 stoical old shoe of the page which I have consecrated 
 to it? 
 
166 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 WISHES. 
 
 What good are they ? One would really be embar- 
 rassed to say. Their vanity makes them seem sus- 
 picious to some, and disagreeable to others. I know 
 some persons who are really annoyed and shocked by 
 them. And this sentiment does not surprise me. Too 
 many good reasons justify it. 
 
 Nothing can equal the banality of certain superficial 
 and careless wishes. They do not interest him who 
 receives them nor him who proffers them. Many are the 
 awkwardly timed wishes which have the effect of a 
 clumsy foot set upon a tender corn. There are some 
 malicious ones which have the air of mocking you; 
 others so tempestuous that they arouse all your bad 
 humor, excite your chagrin. Add to them the stupid, 
 hypocritical and interested wishes. Is there not more 
 than enough to disgust us? 
 
 But, even if they are altogether sincere, intelligent, 
 benevolent, imprinted with an exquisite tact, their lack 
 of power is notorious. From what danger have they 
 preserved our friends? What benefits have they pro- 
 cured ? Does any one believe in their influence ? 
 
 So, then, you are going to propose their suppression ? 
 
 No, indeed ! I should be far from doing that. 
 
 And why? 
 
 Because, and that reason will suffice, we would try 
 in vain to extirpate them. So long as there are men, 
 they will form wishes. We have not before us in this 
 a simple conventionality alone, but one of the forms of 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 167 
 
 mind. To desire, hope, wish, all that is human, like 
 tears and laughter. We shall never be able to stifle 
 laughter, nor ever dry up the source of tears. Nor will 
 the flood of wishes ever cease to flow. 
 
 But, if I had the means of stopping them, I would 
 not do it. A legion of people abuse the good wish: 
 does that prove that it is evil ? If we should be obliged 
 to suppress everything that gives a chance for abuse, 
 nothing would remain. Creation would be entirely de- 
 stroyed. 
 
 The uselessness of good wishes compromises them 
 still more in my eyes. But I can recall treasures re- 
 jected, thrown away, because they were considered use- 
 less. Everything which has no tangible aim is taxed 
 as useless, which has no value in figures ; all which 
 costs and brings nothing. The greater part of all beau- 
 tiful and noble things may be, by this proceeding, as- 
 similated with evil futilities. Now, if it is wise to sim- 
 plify existence, to retrench new generations, we must 
 not, however, allow ourselves to sacrifice the grace and 
 charm of life under the pretence that it is useless. What 
 good, for instance, are the flowers? What folly to 
 spend money for that which does not nourish or clothe 
 us ! And yet, do we deprive ourselves of them ? 
 
 In the kitchen a bunch of turnips or asparagus is 
 preferable to a bunch of roses. But should the rose be 
 banished from the city on that account ? Has it not its 
 own place to fill as well ? 
 
 The uselessness of wishes is a little like that of 
 flowers. For nothing in the world would I deprive 
 myself of them. 
 
1(5£ THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 What good does it do to say "Bon voyage"? or even 
 "Good-night"? 
 
 That does not render the days finer, voyages less dan- 
 gerous, separation less sad, and nights more tranquil. 
 Shall we then renounce saluting each other altogether ? 
 
 No, the salute is a fraternal act, a witness of benevo- 
 lence. One can put a world of comforting sentiments 
 into a cordial "Good-morning." And, though many men 
 salute as parrots speak, I shall never cease to find 
 that salutation one of the highest manifestations of 
 human sociability. Now, if I guard the venerable cus- 
 tom of saying "Good-morning," why deprive me of the 
 right to say "Happy New Year" ? Even if it is but a 
 rather more impressive "Good-morning," it preserves 
 an incontestable value. But the wish is a sign of hope 
 as well, an affirmation of a better future. 
 
 In spite of contrary events and obscurities of life, to 
 continue to mutually wish a good and happy New Year, 
 is to confirm the inalienable right to a hope and a better 
 future. A wish made in good faith and with all one's 
 heart is an act of faith. Humanity needs to believe and 
 to hope. If it still lives it is because it believes in life. 
 A blind confidence sustains it. Is it too much to give 
 to that general confidence an occasion to manifest itself 
 once a year? I do not think so. On account of that 
 reason, in spite of all unpleasant abuses, I am for the 
 old habit of wishing. 
 
 Friend reader, whoever you may be, apprentice or 
 veteran of existence, favored by happiness or visited by 
 pains, anxious about the morrow or assured, on the 
 threshold of two vears, to see even in two centuries, 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 169 
 
 whether you make your calculations with pope or em- 
 peror, I wish that God will keep your heart in peace. 
 
 GOOD WILL. 
 
 While the yule-tide log is burning on the hearth, let 
 me speak of a blessing at once precious and rare — good 
 will. 
 
 It is at first a sort of happy brightness, disposing us 
 to undertake great tasks. There are persons cold and 
 indifferent whom nothing warms or moves. Their own 
 inertia stops them the moment when you cease to push 
 them. You call them, but they do not come. You 
 prick them, but they do not bleed. Stubborn, obstinate 
 souls, despair of men of action, of all those who have 
 the inward order obliging them to propagate ideas, to 
 serve causes, to recruit defenders of the right, witnesses 
 of truth, adversaries of violence, saviors to the 
 wretched. 
 
 The man of good will is the exact contrary — he is 
 ready. Let us say that he is under continual steam, 
 and asks but a sign, asks but to fly to his work. 
 
 Others have their hours. They receive appeals at 
 certain, moments. A notice is given to duty to come 
 when it is their day. Let it resign itself if necessary to 
 
170 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 "make ante-chamber," to allow place to a series of con- 
 ventionalities, the interests and other solicitors of 
 human attention. But do not claim them outside of the 
 time agreed upon. Monsieur has gone out and Madame 
 is reposing and is "not at home" to any one. 
 
 Good will has no hour. Duty calls ; "Here am I," he 
 answers. The seasons or the direction of the wind do 
 not affect him. Let the trumpet sound and the tocsin 
 ring, and he is on his feet. In case of need he will have 
 the courage to jump out of his bed at two o'clock in the 
 morning. 
 
 For some, to have made efforts once, is a motive to 
 forever after abstain from making others. They have 
 tried to act, it would seem, only to convince themselves 
 that there is really nothing to do, so scrupulous you 
 will find them in retaining the remembrance of that 
 unfruitful action. They say, "Oh, we know that. It is 
 an impossible work ; nothing can ever come of it, so to 
 what end ?" 
 
 The man of good will has for his device, "Recom- 
 mence." He does not count his failures, he forgets the 
 time lost. In his eyes, the reasons he furnishes to 
 abandon the game can but be bad. The good ones are 
 summed up in this manner, "Return to the charge." 
 
 Few obstacles resist men of good will at the end. 
 
 Thanks to them, the world goes on. They are the 
 
 coach-horses; the others are the spatters of mud on 
 
 the coach ; while still others are the spokes in the 
 
 wheels. 
 
 ******** 
 
 Another form of good will is benevolence. 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. \^\ 
 
 It says in speaking of its neighbor : 
 
 "Whoever you are I wish you well in advance, and I 
 wish to think of you. Nothing, not even your worst 
 proceedings, your worst conduct, will make me wish 
 you evil. The more you do, the more I ought to regret 
 it, and wish that it had been differently. To offer you 
 the means of returning to the good, I will resign myself 
 before the evidence only, in thinking evil of you, but 
 give you in my mind the benefit of all doubts." 
 
 Benevolence is a fixed determination. It is not in- 
 spired by experience. It precedes it. It is premedita- 
 tion under its happy, I might almost say sublime form. 
 I find it all the more admirable and more worthy of 
 love, that it is so rarely seen. Benevolence makes itself 
 rare, like those corners of the sky in foggy days. We 
 have become befogged ourselves. Our fellow being 
 seen through the atmosphere of heavy vapor which 
 envelops us, appears dull and suspicious. We attribute 
 to him the blackest designs, horrible intentions. He is 
 capable of everything. He is a liar, impure, thief, mur- 
 derer. He is a wolf, an ape, a goat and a donkey in 
 addition. Turpitude, cruelty, imbecility are the words 
 which best paint him. 
 
 Are you very sure of it ? 
 
 We do not deny the evil, it is but too evident. But 
 why aggrandize it by our practices and our imagina- 
 tions ? W 7 hat interest have you to reciprocally attribute 
 all the tarnishings of the heart and mind ? I am greatly 
 struck by the tranquillity with which we accustom our- 
 selves to treat as rabble a throng of unknown persons. 
 At the present moment half humanity willingly believes 
 
172 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 the other half rotten. Do you find that gay, to be the 
 other half of a decomposed body ? 
 
 Not I. I demand more proofs to believe in the im- 
 posture of a man than to believe in his loyalty. Dis- 
 trust malevolence. It is a bad counsellor. It makes us 
 inter men who are not dead, and drag honorable citi- 
 zens to execution. A little benevolence, if you please, 
 and of withholding in your judgments. Let us give 
 humanity credit. Would it not. also be giving credit 
 to God, deeply interested in our affairs? Between us, 
 that is the point that reassures me. With such a helper 
 there is no need of failure. 
 
 Can you not suppose that people may deceive them- 
 selves in good faith? Let us go further, admit even 
 that in good faith some one may speak evil of us. Min- 
 gle with the furious wine of our passions, of our sec- 
 tarian bitternesses, a few drops of good sense and good 
 will. Public life will not be any the worse for it. 
 
 That is my dream, while, symbol of a year which 
 throws its last flashes, the yule log falls in cinders on 
 the hearth. 
 
 PILGRIMAGE. 
 
 I wished to see again the cool valleys where I played 
 some forty years ago. Here I am. By the embalmed 
 solitude of the prairies, I follow a little sinuous path, 
 
THE VOICE OP NATURE. 173 
 
 the same as of old. The brook descends the same in- 
 cline under the willows. The daisies and the butter- 
 cups reflect their images in it, and the furtive trout 
 hides from view. The world in this place made itself 
 graceful and small. The Vosges have become low hills. 
 Between their undulations crowned with pines or 
 beeches, wound the valleys with the narrow horizons. 
 The blackbirds answered back and forth from one 
 tiny point to another. A temperate light enveloped 
 everything. The heart grows peaceful, and the eyes 
 repose themselves. In the peace of this nature un- 
 troubled by any cry, where no trace of struggle 
 showed, I felt like a traveller welcomed home by loved 
 ones. And slowly I entered the sanctuary of remem- 
 brance. The long years, the changeable life, the stages 
 sad or happy, made far away in uneasy cities, all that 
 drew back, effaced itself, and took something of the 
 character of a dream. I am not very sure that it is 
 myself, he whom they know back there, in the society 
 of men, and who has his name and his work, his place 
 marked on the field of ardent battles. That which ap- 
 pears clear to me, at the present hour, is the past, the 
 laughing childhood. Here is the frame intact. Was it 
 not you, old beech-tree, under which I gathered beech- 
 nuts with blue-eyed comrades, with hair like corn silk, 
 covered with myrtles, which are growing on your 
 knotty roots ? What do I see ? Why, there are my com- 
 panions, those, and I know them well, and am surprised 
 at myself not to have been seated ere this among them. 
 Why, then, do they look at me with open mouths, as 
 they look at a stranger ? Have they forgotten that to- 
 
174 *&& VOICE OF NATUHE5. 
 
 gether, the days when we had shoes on, we let ourselves 
 slide down the incline of that rock ? The traces of our 
 joyous sliding place are there still. 
 
 But, let us follow the valley. It leads to the village. 
 -Soon at the turn of the path houses will appear, small, 
 pretty houses of poor people, but picturesque enough to 
 eat. Already I hear the cocks crow. We are then 
 going to meet again, dear little corner of the world, 
 where I lived the serene years which knew no evil, nor 
 death, nor regret for the past, nor anguish for the 
 future. We will see the thresholds of the rustic doors, 
 and, above all, the house, the old dwelling, the presby- 
 ter and his big garden, and his terrace where on the 
 beautiful summer nights I hied myself to worship the 
 moon. 
 
 But, what is that white smoke that rises from the 
 forest in the direction of the village ? Could it be fire ? 
 A strident whistle soon settled my mind on the origin 
 of it, and at the same time dragged me from my dream. 
 The echo repeated it ten times as though to say, "Yes, 
 that is true ; it is very true." The horrible thing was ac- 
 complished, the solitude was deflowered; there was a 
 railroad now. 
 
 I hastened, I came out into the principal valley and 
 before my astonished eyes passed, puffing, blowing out 
 its thick black smoke, a freight train. 
 
 What an awakening ! On the road I accosted an old 
 peasant and asked him where the old presbytery was, 
 
THE VOICE OP NATURE. ijg 
 
 for I seemed lost. With his finger he pointed to the 
 mountain. 
 
 "But it used to be in the valley." 
 
 "Yes, sir, the old one, but they tore it down. That 
 declivity that you see was the place." 
 
 "And the garden?" 
 
 "The*garden ? It is that place filled with rough stones 
 and logs." 
 
 "So nothing remains of the old pastor's house?" 
 
 "No, all has disappeared." 
 
 At this minute arrived a passenger train. It stopped 
 a moment. I heard the whistle of the conductor, then 
 employes cried : 
 
 "Fertig, abfahren." 
 
 "Finished, en route !" That was just the device that 
 suited the hour. Taking my way back again mechani- 
 cally, I remained for a long time under the obsession 
 of those brief and hard words, "Fertig, abfahren." 
 
 All is not finished, however. For the future to see 
 you, paternal home, I will close my eyes, and I will find 
 your image, faithful and indelible, at the bottom of my 
 child's heart. 
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF ALL SAINTS' DAY. 
 
 In these feverish times, when the dead are quickly 
 forgotten, I love this Day of All Saints. It is the day of 
 the conquered, the forgotten, the day of the absent. It 
 
176 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 pleases me to see the throngs moving silently, loaded 
 with chrysanthemums and wreaths of immortelles. 
 What is the religious belief of all these pilgrims to the 
 cemeteries? The answer to that question is not possi- 
 ble. Do we know what passes in the bottom of hearts ? 
 There are in each of us mysterious places which God 
 alone knows. To bring our judgments there would be 
 the height of temerity and indiscretion. 
 
 I do not know whether those who weep there weep 
 hopelessly. They carry their pious homages to pure 
 memories. Do they dare, or not, lift their eyes towards 
 the immortal light ? I do not know. But their sorrow 
 is holy, their respect touches and moves me. Whether 
 they know it or not, they lift themselves, the one and 
 the other, above the present moment, and what they do 
 reposes the soul from the noisy train, the coarse and 
 foolish ordinary joys, cuts on the grand mixture of 
 inferior interests with advantage. To weep for the 
 dead is to keep oneself on the threshold of eternal 
 things; it is to belong, if only for an hour, to those 
 whom a brutal utilitarianism has ruled. To honor the 
 dead, the conquered ones of life, to dedicate our flowers 
 to the forgotten ones, is to accomplish an act of spiritual 
 worth. 
 
 In each Parisian cemetery there is an anonymous 
 monument. There those who have no tombs to go to, 
 carry their flowers, offer their prayers or their tears. 
 They remember the dead that were lost at sea, that fire 
 has claimed, so that nothing of them remained, not even 
 a handful of ashes to gather in an urn. There they go 
 to think of soldiers, fallen before the enemy, buried in 
 
THE VOICE OF NATURE. 177 
 
 foreign countries, in the colonies, children dead for 
 their mother country, and whose bodies were never re- 
 covered. These anonymous monuments, where stran- 
 gers elbow each other loaded under the same burden of 
 flowers, these stones under which no one sleeps, remind 
 us of the altar to the Unknown God, of whom St. Paul 
 spoke to the Athenians. Salute them in passing. Give 
 a prayer to these disappeared ones, to those who 
 have died alone, far away, without a good-bye, without 
 sepulture, or last honors. After seeing these imper- 
 sonal monuments of pious remembrance direct your 
 steps towards the corner of the excommunicated ones. 
 Our law is very strict, but it exists always, and morally 
 it occupies more space than one might think. 
 
 In other times in this accursed place, infamous 
 ground which prayer never sanctified, lie the suicides, 
 those executed for crimes, and most criminal of all — 
 the heretics. No corner of the earth, no place of last 
 repose gives so much to reflect upon as that. The 
 contemporaries have always turned their heads away 
 from them. It is cold there and weeds and thistles 
 have invaded it. It has the lugubrious air of haunted 
 places. For the just of to-day, the man of correct con- 
 duct, of official thought, of beliefs controlled and ap- 
 proved, in this corner is the ante-chamber of hell. Of 
 those who lie there no one must say, "Happy the dead 
 who die in the Lord." 
 
 Sit down, however, in this corner, my brother passer- 
 by, and think a minute. Stir their ashes mentally. 
 
 Among these murderers, these infamous ones, the 
 reprimanded of human justice, you will find there the 
 
178 THE VOICE OP NATURE. 
 
 champions of the future, prophets, martyrs and noble 
 victims of intolerance and fanaticism. If you are the 
 son of Huguenots, you will have no trouble in finding 
 there your coreligionists, the very ancestors of your 
 family perhaps. If you are a philosopher you will find 
 there many colleagues. If you are a Christian-, remem- 
 ber that Christ was put on the cross between two 
 thieves. Thus always, even to the tomb, the world has 
 mingled the best and the worst. That should not oblige 
 us to honor only the pure memories, misunderstood by 
 contemporaries. The lesson should bear upon the 
 present. 
 
 Human justice is essentially fallible. It makes the 
 real crimes to appear innocent, and taxes the crimi- 
 nal with acts, thoughts and beliefs inspired by jus- 
 tice and truth themselves. Who knows if, among the 
 category of men regarded in the present day with 
 severity, there do not exist beings more just than their 
 judges, better than their epoch, and whose condemna- 
 tion will not fall back on our heads, in posterity ? In the 
 tombs that are well cared for, honored, surrounded by 
 benedictions, and covered with signs of respect, might 
 there not be found thieves, murderers and impious 
 ones ? Among those who have been hanged, those guil- 
 lotined, galley slaves dead in their chains and branded 
 with hot iron, there may be, are, heroes and saints. No 
 one has the right to forget it. 
 
 And to preserve the soul from that dust of prejudice 
 which is falling on it, staining it, the thoughtless cus- 
 toms, the current opinions, the unjust and blind routine, 
 it is good to go sometimes, far from the conflicts and 
 
THE VOICE OP NATURE. 179 
 
 the passions of the day, and meditate and pray among 
 those who sleep. The dumb tomb gives us lessons that 
 the most eloquent mouth could not equal. 
 
 PAQUERETTE— EASTER DAISY. 
 
 TO MY SON PIERRE. 
 
 In the young verdure of the sunny fields, little daisy, 
 why is it that your smile does me so much good? 
 Scarcely opened at the last dawn, we met for the first 
 time. Why, then, fresh and fragile adornment of the 
 spring fields, have I been able to find in you that famil- 
 iar air of loved old faces ? 
 
 You remind me of your flourishing little sisters that 
 bloomed under my childish feet, and that I went to 
 gather with gay companions of my age. Delicate Eas- 
 ter daisies, with snowy crowns, their sight made our 
 eyes shine, they filled our little hands. Of those eyes 
 how many sleep in the tomb, of those busy hands how 
 many are folded away forever over motionless hearts. 
 
 Do you remember, little Paquerette, Easter daisy? 
 You do remember ; I feel it. The same soul is in you 
 which shone on the brows of your sisters, the same 
 hand, little ephemeral star, lighted you, and in your 
 frail beauty wove an eternal thought. 
 
180 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 Oh, the beautiful Easters of those days ! A super- 
 natural light enveloped the earth, bathing the forests, 
 and vibrated through the white splendors of the blos- 
 soming cherry trees. It was not the light of other 
 days, the passing light of a material sun ; it was a mys- 
 terious and celestial clearness, pure reflection of the 
 imperishable world. 
 
 The birds sang "He is risen, He is risen !" the newly 
 opened buds on the trees whispered between them. A 
 whole chime of tiny bells resounded across the fields of 
 lilies-of-the-valley, and the good news ran and mur- 
 mured in the crystal of the brooks. Alone, falling 
 under the moss of years, the old cross at the beginning 
 of the path persisted, in all this glory of Eastertide, in 
 keeping the sadness of Good Friday. So then, on its 
 venerable arms we hung garlands that all might be in 
 unison. 
 
 Happy times. They are still. You recall them, little 
 Easter daisy? Is it not made like you, that which is 
 always reborn ? Thank you for saying it. We will not 
 let pass this beautiful, this royal Easter day, without 
 having opened our hearts to the light, as the field flow- 
 ers open in the morning. See, here are two thousand 
 years that, in the shadow as we are, millions of hearts 
 have been warmed at this fire. It is enriched in burn- 
 ing, its power has grown with the great good that it 
 does. Easter! Without the things enclosed in that 
 word, how desolate would be the earth ! 
 
 We were slaves of that sombre queen called death. 
 All life, all thought, all works belonged to her. A black 
 grave was dug beneath the feet of hope. There was no 
 
THE VOICE OP NATURE. 1§1 
 
 to-morrow for crushed innocence, no late and repairing 
 day for expiring justice. Nothingness said to me : "I 
 am waiting for you. All paths lead to me. Your tears 
 and your songs, your prayers and your faith, will all 
 finish in the dust." And we went dumbly on under 
 the cloud heavy with fatality. 
 
 On this stifling world, one saving hand is laid, hand 
 of man in whom circulated the power of God. It con- 
 tested for empire with nothingness, with death for its 
 prey ; it broke the band of lead that encircled the human 
 soul, and made a crevice in the illimitable horizon. 
 Since then the shadow has diminished in the world. 
 Night has drawn back. It will never regain the lost 
 ground. 
 
 Do not allow ourselves to be imposed upon by the 
 foggy hour where we are now passing. It proves one 
 thing : certain fashions of living diminish hope and dry 
 up our faith. There is no Easter for those who sow in 
 the wind, those whose lives are passed in burying them- 
 selves under their vanities, the hatreds and stains, in 
 being their own grave-diggers. Perhaps those are not 
 wrong in thinking that they will utterly perish, for they 
 have renounced all that which is immortal. But these 
 mournful ideas grow like morbid flowers on the re- 
 mains of our corrupted lives. The pure air and healthy 
 ground, the ground of the Gospels, knows them not. 
 
 To take part in the message of Easter, we must have 
 borne our cross, have tried to follow the footsteps of 
 Jesus, who sheds the light. Without cross, without 
 sacrifice, without repentance, without the- renouncing of 
 all perishable things, there is no Easter. Easter is the 
 
182 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 
 
 crown of victory, but it must be conquered. Before 
 crown there is the battle, abnegations, dark places 
 where one doubts the road, abysses to cross where faith 
 only sees clear. Before that pure gold of imperishable 
 life can appear to our eyes, it is necessary to pass 
 through that purifying crucible. 
 
 The Prince of Life said to us : "Look at the flowers 
 of the field." Easter daisy, I looked at you, and you 
 spoke to me of Him. You told me : "The things which 
 cause us so much suffering will end; one day the 
 abysses will be filled, wounds healed, tears effaced. 
 There will be Easters at the end of our Calvaries, Eas- 
 ters more beautiful still than those radiant days of 
 childhood where you thought to find in the morning 
 dew traces of the One who had risen." 
 
 THE END. 
 
G^JT^JUDGrXr^ OP 
 
 Popular Religious Books, 
 
 Sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of price. 
 
 THE WEDDING RING. 
 
 This book contains a series of thirteen sermons delivered 
 by Kev. T. De Witt Talmage, D.D. No sermons ever de- 
 livered have created so great a sensation as this series. 
 Hundreds of people could not get into the church to 
 listen to them. 
 If you are married, or expect to be, or if you have father, 
 mother, brother, or sister you should read this book. The 
 sermons are not only on the relations between husband and 
 wife, but on all the family relations. It tells how, when, and 
 whom you should marry, and gives good advice on all the 
 relations of life. 
 
 The following is the Table of Contents : The Choice of a 
 Wife ; The Choice of a Husband ; Clandestine Marriage ; Ma- 
 trimonial Harmony or Discord ; Marital Duties ; Costume and 
 Morals ; Duties of Wives to Husbands ; Hotels versus Homes ; 
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 Patrimony; Motherhood; Trials of Housekeeping. Paper 
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 WOMAN: HER POWER AND PRIVILEGES. 
 
 This is a series of twelve sermons by Bev. T. De Witt Tal- 
 mage, D.D., and should be read by all who are interested 
 i in the home and family. 
 
 The following is the Table of Contents : Women Who Figkt 
 the Battle of Life Alone ; Worldly Marriages ; Broken Prom- 
 ises of Marriage ; Dominion of Fashion ; The Veil of Modesty ; 
 Wifely Ambitions; Good and Bad; Woman's Happiness— 
 What Can and What Cannot Make a Woman Happy; The 
 Grandmother ; Woman's Opportunity ; The Queen of Home : 
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 1 
 
TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS ON THE HOLY LAND. 
 
 By Rev. T. De TVitt Talmage, D.D. No series of sermons 
 
 ever delivered by this famous preacher has created such 
 
 a widespread and intense interest as this. These sermons 
 
 describe with vivid interest the scenes, incidents and 
 
 many various experiences met with in the Holy Land, the 
 
 land in which people are now more interested than ever 
 
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 Among the hundreds of thousands of people who have read 
 
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 are none but will be glad to have this book. 
 
 The following is the Table of Conten ,s : Eve of Departure ; I 
 must also see Rome ; A Mediterranean Voyage , Paul's Mission 
 iu Athens ; Life and Death of Dorcas ; The Glory of Solomon's 
 Reign ; Peace, be Still ; The Marriage Feast ; Christmas Eve 
 in the Holy Land ; The Joyful Surprise ; How a King's Life 
 was Saved ; The Phillipian Earthquake ; What is in a Name ; 
 The Half was not Told me ; I "Went up to Jerusalem ; On the 
 Housetop in Jerusalem ; The Journey to Jericho ; He Toucheth 
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 Hills ; Our Sail on Lake Galilee ; On to Damascus ; Across 
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 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
 
 This book contains a series of sermons by Rev. T. De Witt 
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 book, and thus be informed of the real solution of the 
 question of the relations of Labor and Capital. 
 The following is the Table of Contents : The Labor Ques- 
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 LIFE OF REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D. 
 
 By Rev. John Lobb. Everyone interested in reading Tal- 
 mage's Sermons will be glad to read the history of his lite 
 as written by his friend, Mr. Lobb. 
 The following is the Table of Contents • Birth and Parent- 
 age; His Boyhood; Entering the Ministry; He Visits Engp 
 
land; His Eeturn to America; History of the Brooklyn Taber- 
 nacle ; The New Tabernacle ; Midnight Explorations ; Auto- 
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 WHY I AM WHAT I AM. 
 
 A book you should read.— Why I Ana What I Am. 
 Why I am a Baptist, Rev. R. S. McArthur, D.D. ; Why I am 
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 I am a Methodist, Rev. G. H. McGrew ; Why I am an Episco- 
 palian, Rev. William R. Huntington, D.D. ; Why I am a 
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 tionalism Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D. ; Why I am a New- 
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 Rev. Chas. H. Eaton; Why I am a Unitarian, Rev. John 
 White Chad wick ; Why I am a Jew ; Rev. Dr. Gustav Gott- 
 heil ; Why I am a Lutheran, Rev. G. F. Krotel, D.D. ; Why I 
 am a Friend, John J. Cornell ; Why I am a Disciple ; Rev. B. 
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 The CJiristian Union says of it : 
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 ROYAL GEMS. 
 
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 1. The Royal Invitation : Or, Daily Thoughts on Coming to 
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 MOODY'S SERMONS. 
 
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 Moody's New Sermons.— Contents: The "Work of the Holy 
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 Moody's Latest Sermons.— Contents : "Excuse Giving"; 
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DEC 3 1904 
 
PRICE, 30 CENTS. 
 
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 THE SOUL OF THINGS. 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES WAGNER, 
 
 author of "The Simple Life," "The Busy Life," Etc., Etc. 
 
 ESIDENT ROOSEVELT says to the author of this book 
 
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 TO ny COUNTRyiiEN." 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 
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RELIGIOUS BOOKS. 
 
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 bound in paper cover, price 25 cents each. 
 
 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S TALKS AND PICTURES. Br 
 
 Rev. C. H. Spurgeon. 
 
 SPURGEON'S TWELVE BEST SERMONS. By Rev. 
 
 C. H. Spurgeon. 
 
 TEN NIGHTS IN A BAR ROOM. By T. S. Arthur. 
 
 THE WEDDING RING. Sermons by Rev. T. De Witt 
 Tannage. 
 
 ROYAL GEMS. By Frances Ridley HavergaL 
 
 IN HIS STEPS. By Rev. Chas. M. Sheldon. 
 
 BLACK ROCK. By Ralph Connor. 
 
 DANESBURY HOUSE— A $1,000 Prize Temperance 
 Story. By Mrs. Henry Wood, author of ' ' Bast Lynne. " 
 
 MOODY'S LATEST SERMONS. By Dwight L. Moody. 
 
 BLACK BEAUTY— The Story of a Horse. By Anna 
 
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 EARLY CONVERSION. By Rev. E. Payson Hammond. 
 
 WHY I AM WHAT I AM. By Fourteen Clergymen. 
 
 PRINCE OF THE HOUSE OF DAVID. By Rev. J. H. 
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