munion. He who easily weds himself to the 
crowd becomes acquainted with feverish en-
joyments, of which the egotist, closed up like a 
strong-box, and the idle man, shut up in his 
shell like a mollusc, are eternally deprived. He 
adopts as his own all the professions, all the 
joys, and all the miseries which chance brings 
under his notice. 
What men call love is very small, very re-
stricted, very weak compared with this ineffa-
ble orgy, this holy prostitution of the soul, 
which gives itself altogether, all its poetry, all 
its good will, to every unexpected object, to 
the stranger who passes by. 
It is sometimes well to teach the happy of 
this world, were it only to humiliate for a mo-
ment their foolish pride, that there are pleas-
ures superior to theirs, pleasures more vast 
and more refined. Those who found colleges, 
who teach peoples, missionary priests exiled to 
the end of the earth, without doubt know 
something of these mysterious intoxications, 
and in the bosom of the vast family which their 
genius has made for themselves, they must 
sometimes laugh at those who compassionate 
them for their troubled fortune and for their life 
so chaste.