CHAPTER XIII 



THE OLD WEEVILS 



In winter, when the insect enjoys an enforced rest, the 

 study of numismatics procures me some delightful 

 moments. I love to interrogate its metal disks, the 

 records of the petty things which men call history. In 

 this soil of Provence, where the Greek planted the olive- 

 tree and the Roman planted the law, the peasant finds 

 coins, scattered more or less everywhere, when he turns 

 his sod. He brings them to me and consults me as to 

 their pecuniary value, never as to their meaning. 



What matters to him the inscription on his treasure- 

 trove ! Men suffered of yore, they suffer to-day, they 

 will suffer in the future : to him, all history is summed 

 up in that ! The rest is sheer futility, a pastime of the 

 idle. 



I do not possess this lofty philosophy of indifference 

 to things of the past. I scratch the piece of money 

 with my finger-nail, I carefully strip it of its earthy rind, 

 I examine it with the magnifying-glass, I try to decipher 

 its legend. And my satisfaction is no small one when 

 the little round bronze or silver disk has spoken. For 

 then I have read a page of humanity, not in books, which 

 are witnesses open to suspicion, but in records which 

 are, in a manner, living and which were contemporary 

 with the persons and the facts. 



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