"Go next to the faubourgs, to the factories, especially the smaller ones, where the children or the employers labor with the men. Watch the army of workers marching to their tasks. How ready and willing these young girls seem, as they come gaily down from their distant quarters to the shops and stores and offices of the city. Then visit the homes from which they come. See the woman of the people at her work. Her husband's wages are modest, their dwelling is cramped, the children are many, the father is often harsh. Make a collection of the biographies of lowly people, budgets of modest family life: look at them attentively and long.
"After that, go see the students. Those who have scandalized you in the streets are numerous, but those who labor hard are legion—only they stay at home, and are not talked about. If you knew the toil and dig of the Latin Quarter! You find the papers full of the rumpus made by a certain set of youths who call themselves students. The papers say enough of those who break windows; but why do they make no mention of those who spend their nights toiling over problems? Because it wouldn't interest the public. Yes, when now and then one of them, a medical student perhaps, dies a victim to professional duty, the matter has two lines in the dailies. A drunken brawl gets half a column, with every detail elaborated. Nothing is lacking but the portraits of the heroes—and not always that!
"I should never end were I to try to point out to you all that you must go to see if you would see all: you would needs make the tour of society at large, rich and poor, wise and ignorant. And certainly you would not judge so severely then. Paris is a world, and here, as in the world in general, the good hides away while the evil flaunts itself. Observing only the surface, you sometimes ask how there can possibly be so much riff-raff. When, on the contrary, you look into the depths, you are astonished that in this troublous, obscure and sometimes frightful life there can be so much of virtue."
BUT why linger over these things? Am I not blowing trumpets for those who hold trumpet-blowing in horror? Do not understand me so. My aim is this—to make men think about unostentatious goodness; above all, to make them love it and practice it. The man who finds his satisfaction in things which glitter and hold his eyes, is lost: first, because he will thus see evil before all else; then, because he gets accustomed to the sight of only such good as seeks for notice, and therefore easily succumbs to the temptation to live himself for appearances. Not only must one be resigned to obscurity, he must love it, if he does not wish to slip insensibly into the ranks of figurants, who preserve their parts only while under the eyes of the spectators, and put off in the wings the restraints imposed on the stage. Here we are in the presence of one of the essential elements of the moral life. And this which we say is true not only for those who are called humble and whose lot it is to pass unremarked; it is just as true, and more so, for the chief actors. If you would not be a brilliant inutility, a man of gold lace and plumes, but empty inside, you must play the star rôle in the simple spirit of the most obscure of your collaborators. He who is nothing worth except on hours of parade, is worth less than nothing. Have we the perilous honor of being always in view, of marching in the front ranks? Let us take so much the greater care of the sanctuary of silent good within us. Let us give to the structure whose façade is seen of our fellow-men, a wide foundation of simplicity, of humble fidelity. And then, out of sympathy, out of gratitude, let us stay near our brothers who are unknown to fame. We owe everything to them—do we not? I call to witness everyone who has found in life this encouraging experience, that stones hidden in the soil hold up the whole edifice. All those who arrive at having a public and recognized value, owe it to some humble spiritual ancestors, to some forgotten inspirers. A small number of the good, among them simple women, peasants, vanquished heroes, parents as modest as they are revered, personify for us beautiful and noble living; their example inspires us and gives us strength. The remembrance of them is forever inseparable from that conscience before which we arraign ourselves. In our hours of trial, we think of them, courageous and serene, and our burdens lighten. In clouds they compass us about, these witnesses invisible and beloved who keep us from stumbling and our feet from falling in the battle; and day by day do they prove to us that the treasure of humanity is its hidden goodness.
X
THE WORLD AND THE LIFE OF THE HOME
IN the time of the Second Empire, in one of our pleasantest sub-prefectures of the provinces, a little way from some baths frequented by the Emperor, there was a mayor, a very worthy man and intelligent too, whose head was suddenly turned by the thought that his sovereign might one day descend upon his home. Up to this time he had lived in the house of his fathers, a son respectful of the slightest family traditions. But when once the all-absorbing idea of receiving the Emperor had taken possession of his brain, he became another man. In this new light, what had before seemed sufficient for his needs, even enjoyable, all this simplicity that his ancestors had loved, appeared poor, ugly, ridiculous. Out of the question to ask an Emperor to climb this wooden staircase, sit in these old arm-chairs, walk over such superannuated carpets. So the mayor called architect and masons; pickaxes attacked walls and demolished partitions, and a drawing-room was made, out of all proportion to the rest of the house in size and splendor. He and his family retired into close quarters, where people and furniture incommoded each other generally. Then, having emptied his purse and upset his household by this stroke of genius, he awaited the royal guest. Alas, he soon saw the end of the Empire arrive, but the Emperor never.
The folly of this poor man is not so rare. As mad as he are all those who sacrifice their home life to the demands of the world. And the danger in such a sacrifice is most menacing in times of unrest. Our contemporaries are constantly exposed to it, and constantly succumbing. How many family treasures have they literally thrown away to satisfy worldly ambitions and conventions; but the happiness upon which they thought to come through these impious immolations always eludes them.