WHO ARE MAD, AND WHO SANE. 71 



the wool and the hides of dead animals. The boat in which 

 we glide between the river's green banks — why, it was a dead 

 tree that supplied the planks for it. This fire before which 

 we chat, is fed by the members of carcases of trees. Your 

 joyous festivals, your every day repasts, present to your eyes 

 and your appetites portions of dead animals. This wine, of 

 which you boast the age, reminds you that he who gathered 

 the vintage, he who made the corks, that he who bottled it, 

 and all who were then living, are dead. And in the evening, 

 when you go to the theatre to see Cinna or Mithridates repre- 

 sented, those personages you look upon, are they not the 

 shades of the dead whom you evoke that they may come 

 and gambol before you and amuse you? 



When these thoughts come over me, I am seized with a 

 profound horror for all trouble, anxiety, and agitation; I only 

 think of living quietly, without a care for the present or the 

 future, and I wonder at the extravagance of all those men 

 who, having but two hours to sleep, pass those two hours in 

 making and turning over their bed. It appears to me that 

 I then see all these people who are elbowing each other, in 

 order to attain I don't know what, to be furious madmen ; 

 and I became of the opinion of that philosopher, who pre- 

 tended to have discovered the true reason for there being, in 

 aU great cities, a lunatic asylum : it is, that by shutting up 

 some poor creatures under the name of madmen, strangers 

 might believe that all who are out of that hospital are sane. 



