Little Poems in Prose

the fear that Santerre’s drums might cut off their talk untimely. I do not pity them, because I can see that their oratorial effusions procure for them pleasures equal to those which others draw from silence and contemplation; but I despise them. I wish above all that my cursed journalist would allow me to amuse myself as I like. “You never feel then,” says he to me, with a slightly apostolic snivel, “the need of sharing your en- joyments with others?” Look what a subtle form of envy is his; he knows that I disdain his pleasures, and he wishes to sneak into mine, the ugly spoilsport! “This great misfortune of not being able to be alone,” says somewhere La Bruyère, “as if to shame those who run to forget themselves in the crowd, fearing doubtless that they will be unable to tolerate their own company.” “Nearly all our misfortunes come to us from our not having the sense to remain in our chamber,” says another wise man, Pascal, I think; thus summoning back into the cell of meditation all these wrong-headed persons who seek happiness in movement and in a prostitution which, if I were willing to speak the beautiful language of my epoch, I might call fraternitatal.