THE MIRROR
A frightful man enters, and looks at himself in a glass.
"Why do you look at yourself in the mirror, since you can view yourself only with displeasure?"
The frightful man answers me: "Sir, in accordance with the immortal principles of '89, all men have equal rights; therefore I have the right to behold myself; with pleasure or displeasure, that concerns only my conscience."
In the name of common sense, I was surely right; but, from a legal standpoint, he was not wrong.
THE HARBOR
A harbor is a charming abode for a soul weary of the struggles of life. The amplitude of the sky, the mobile architecture of the clouds, the changing colorations of the sea, the scintillating of the beacon-lights, form a prism marvellously adapted to entertain the eyes without tiring them. The slender forms of the ships, with their complicated rigging, to which the billows give harmonious oscillations, serve to maintain the taste for rhythm and for beauty. And, above all, there is a sort of mysterious and aristocratic pleasure for him who no longer has curiosity or ambition, in contemplating, couched in the turret or leaning on the pier, all the movements of those who depart and those who return, of those who still have the strength to will, the desire to travel or to acquire wealth.