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anger, when you are biting down your cries of fury, and when you have
within you more savage turbulence and more bitter foam than the ocean!
It is thus that the rich make prisoners of the poor.
This slime of a good action performed towards you bedaubs and bespatters
you with mud for ever.
An alms is irremediable. Gratitude is paralysis. A benefit is a sticky
and repugnant adherence which deprives you of free movement. Those
odious, opulent, and spoiled creatures whose pity has thus injured you
are well aware of this. It is done--you are their creature. They have
bought you--and how? By a bone taken from their dog and cast to you.
They have flung that bone at your head. You have been stoned as much as
benefited. It is all one. Have you gnawed the bone--yes or no? You have
had your place in the dog-kennel as well. Then be thankful--be ever
thankful. Adore your masters. Kneel on indefinitely. A benefit implies
an understood inferiority accepted by you. It means that you feel them
to be gods and yourself a poor devil. Your diminution augments them.
Your bent form makes theirs more upright. In the tones of their voices
there is an impertinent inflexion. Their family matters--their
marriages, their baptisms, their child-bearings, their progeny--all
concern you. A wolf cub is born to them. Well, you have to compose a
sonnet. You are a poet because you are low. Isn't it enough to make the
stars fall! A little more, and they would make you wear their old shoes.
"
Who have you got there, my dear? How ugly he is! Who is that man?"
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