CHAPTER I 
THE OLD WEEVILS 
N winter, when the insect takes an en- 
forced rest, the study of numismatics 
affords me some delightful moments. I love 
to interrogate its metal disks, the records of 
the petty things which men cal] 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 the sod. He brings them to me and 
consults me upon their pecuniary value, 
never upon 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 
I 
