I could bring a hundred examples to bear upon this subject but the shorter a discourse is the better. Woe betide the newly-arrived beauty or a new writer!Īs few as possible fighting round the cake! That's the best way! Vain ladies and men of letters are usually so disposed. All of us, as a rule, rob the chance-comer and tear him to pieces. So, it may be, a similar joint-interest in property or in glory and grandeur leads such people as the governors of states, certain favoured courtiers, and people of a trade to behave exactly like these jealous dogs. All the dogs of the district with one idea in their heads join forces, barking and biting, to chase the intruder beyond the bounds of their territory. When strange dogs pass through any spot beyond their customary route there is a grand to-do. Let us add to this example another of a more ordinary kind. True rabbits, they run again into the death-dealing hands of fortune. Again I see the rabbits more light-hearted than ever coming close under my death-dealingĭoes not this give us a picture of mankind? Dispersed by some storm, men no sooner reach a haven than they are ready again to risk the same winds and the same distress. The report sends them all to seek refuge in their subterranean city.īut their great fright is soon over the danger quickly forgotten. If at the hour when night has scarcely passed and day hardly begun I climb into a tree, on the edge of some wood, and, like a new Jupiter from the heights of Olympus, I send a shot at some unsuspecting rabbit, then the whole colony of rabbits, who were enjoying their thyme-scented meal with open eyes and listening ears upon the heath, immediately scamper away.

Nature has allowed every living thing a drop or two from the fount at which the spirits of all creatures imbibe.

When I have noticed how man acts at times, and how, in a thousand ways, he comports himself just as the lower animals do, I have often said to myself that the lord of these lower orders has no fewer faults than his subjects.

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