"Because! Because!" replied the incensed Fairy, turning her back on him; and, rejoining the train of her companions, she said to them: "What do you think of this little vainglorious Frenchman, who wants to know everything, and who, having secured for his son the best of gifts, dares still to question and to dispute the indisputable?"
SOLITUDE
A philanthropic journalist once said to me that solitude is harmful to man, and, to support his thesis, he cited—as do all unbelievers—words of the Christian Fathers.
I know that the Demon gladly frequents parched places, and that the spirit of murder and lechery is marvellously inflamed in solitude. But it is possible that solitude is dangerous only to the idle, rambling soul, who peoples it with his passions and his chimeras.
It is certain that a babbler, whose supreme pleasure consists in speaking from a pulpit or a rostrum, would be taking great chances of going stark mad on the island of Crusoe. I do not demand of my journalist the courageous virtues of Robinson, but I ask that he do not summon in accusation lovers of solitude and mystery.
There are in our chattering races individuals who would accept the supreme agony with less reluctance, if they were permitted to deliver a copious harangue from the height of the scaffold, without fear that the drums of Santerre[1] would unseasonably cut short their oration.
I do not pity them, for I guess that their oratorical effusions bring them delights equal to those which others draw from silence and seclusion; but I despise them.
I desire above all that my accursed journalist leave me to amuse myself as I will. "Then you never feel," he says in a very apostolic nasal tone, "the need of sharing your joys?" Do you see the subtle jealous one! He knows that I scorn his, and he comes to insinuate himself into mine, the horrible killjoy!
"The great misfortune of not being able to be alone," La Bruyère says somewhere, as though to shame those who rush to forget themselves in the crowd, fearing, doubtless, that they will be unable to endure themselves.