138 A TOOK EOTJND MY GARDEN. 



apparel of animals which browse in the meadows, or of 

 insects that crawl beneath your feetj there is scarcely one 

 from which you do not borrow a portion of its covering. 

 Your grandest and most splendid attire is composed of the 

 shreds you steal from one or another, from sheep and from 

 silk-worms. 



Observe that woman now passing : yesterday she was mild 

 and good, to-day you see she is haughty and insolent. What 

 has created this change in her ? Nothing, only she has upon 

 her head a feather plucked from the tail of an ostrich ! How 

 proud that ostrich. ought to be, which has so many more, and 

 all its own ! 



But it wiU be even worse to-morrow, when she will envelop 

 herself in a shawl made of the hair of certain goats from 

 Thibet — goats which I have seen, and which really do not 

 appear anything like so proud of this hair as the ladies are 

 who borrow it of them. 



And that robe, the great value of which produces such 

 disdainful glances from other women, is nothing but the web 

 in which a large worm, called a silk-worm, enveloped itself — a 

 web which it abandoned with disdain as soon as it had become 

 a white and plain moth ! 



It is a singular thing to associate this humility, which leads 

 man to conceal his real figure, and adorn himself with the 

 superfluities of insects and animals, with the superiority which 

 he attributes to himself over all nature. It must be further 

 confessed, that a man who should unite in himself the facul- 

 ties of certain insects, — who could, like the hydrophilus, fly in 

 the air, and plunge to the depths of the waters, — would only 

 have to pass for a god among other men, by not opposing 

 himself too strongly to the natural servility which is the 

 portion of most men, even of those who talk most loudly 

 about liberty and independence. Eead history ; a tyrant has 

 never been overthrown, but for the benefit, more or less 

 immediate, of another tyrant. To-day, when we pride our- 

 selves upon no longer saluting a king, we unharness the horses 

 of dancers, singers, and courtesans — ^harness ourselves in their 

 places — and take a pride in dragging their carriage in 

 triumph ! 



We were speaking of insects splendidly clothed. Follow with 



