Two puppies
were disporting themselves on a grave close by, half hidden by the
high grass.
A young and well dressed couple, leading by the hand a little girl
clothed in silk and velvet, passed the seat on which they sat. The
poor copyist raised his eyes to the young dandy and recognised a
former colleague from the Board of Trade who, however, did not seem to
see him. A feeling of bitter envy seized him with such intensity that
he felt more humiliated by this "ignoble sentiment" than by his
deplorable condition. Was he angry with the other man because he
filled a position which he himself had coveted? Surely not. But
of a sense of justice, and his suffering was all the deeper because
it was shared by the whole class of the disinherited. He was convinced
that the inmates of the poorhouse, bowed down under the yoke of public
charity, envied his wife; and he was quite sure that many of the
aristocrats who slept all around him in their graves, under their coats
of arms, would have envied him his children if it had been their lot to
die without leaving an heir to their estates. Certainly, nobody under
the sun enjoyed complete happiness, but why did the plums always fall
to the lot of those who were already sitting in the lap of luxury? And
how was it that the prizes always fell to the organisers of the great
lottery? The disinherited had to be content with the mass said at
evening prayers; to their share fell morality and those virtues which
the others despised and of which they had no need because the gates of
heaven opened readily enough to their wealth.
Pages:
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233