here. By Jove! I am a great admirer of exquisite banquets in well closed

rooms. I have missed my vocation. I was born to be a sensualist. The

greatest of stoics was Philoxenus, who wished to possess the neck of a

crane, so as to be longer in tasting the pleasures of the table.

Receipts to-day, naught. Nothing sold all day. Inhabitants, servants,

and tradesmen, here is the doctor, here are the drugs. You are losing

your time, old friend. Pack up your physic. Every one is well down here.

It's a cursed town, where every one is well! The skies alone have

diarrhoea--what snow! Anaxagoras taught that the snow was black; and he

was right, cold being blackness. Ice is night. What a hurricane! I can

fancy the delight of those at sea. The hurricane is the passage of

demons. It is the row of the tempest fiends galloping and rolling head

over heels above our bone-boxes. In the cloud this one has a tail, that

one has horns, another a flame for a tongue, another claws to its wings,

another a lord chancellor's paunch, another an academician's pate. You

may observe a form in every sound. To every fresh wind a fresh demon.

The ear hears, the eye sees, the crash is a face. Zounds! There are

folks at sea--that is certain. My friends, get through the storm as best

you can. I have enough to do to get through life. Come now, do I keep an

inn, or do I not? Why should I trade with these travellers? The

universal distress sends its spatterings even as far as my poverty. Into

my cabin fall hideous drops of the far-spreading mud of mankind. I am

given up to the voracity of travellers. I am a prey--the prey of those

dying of hunger. Winter, night, a pasteboard hut, an unfortunate friend

below and without, the storm, a potato, a fire as big as my fist,

parasites, the wind penetrating through every cranny, not a halfpenny,

and bundles which set to howling. I open them and find beggars inside.

256

The Man Who Laughs