Oh, you believe in the right to humiliate us with lodging and

nourishment, and you imagine that we are your debtors, and you count on

our gratitude! Very well; we will eat up your substance, we will devour

you alive and gnaw your heart-strings with our teeth.

This Josiana! Was it not absurd? What merit had she? She had

accomplished the wonderful work of coming into the world as a testimony

of the folly of her father and the shame of her mother. She had done us

the favour to exist, and for her kindness in becoming a public scandal

they paid her millions; she had estates and castles, warrens, parks,

lakes, forests, and I know not what besides, and with all that she was

making a fool of herself, and verses were addressed to her! And

Barkilphedro, who had studied and laboured and taken pains, and stuffed

his eyes and his brain with great books, who had grown mouldy in old

works and in science, who was full of wit, who could command armies, who

could, if he would, write tragedies like Otway and Dryden, who was made

to be an emperor--Barkilphedro had been reduced to permit this nobody to

prevent him from dying of hunger. Could the usurpation of the rich, the

hateful elect of chance, go further? They put on the semblance of being

generous to us, of protecting us, and of smiling on us, and we would

drink their blood and lick our lips after it! That this low woman of the

court should have the odious power of being a benefactress, and that a

man so superior should be condemned to pick up such bribes falling from

such a hand, what a frightful iniquity! And what social system is this

which has for its base disproportion and injustice? Would it not be best

to take it by the four corners, and to throw pell-mell to the ceiling

371

The Man Who Laughs