moonlight is something. To suppress the lords was an idea which Orestes,

mad as he was, would not have dared to entertain. To say that the lords

are mischievous or useless is as much as to say that the state should be

revolutionized, and that men are not made to live like cattle, browsing

the grass and bitten by the dog. The field is shorn by the sheep, the

sheep by the shepherd. It is all one to me. I am a philosopher, and I

care about life as much as a fly. Life is but a lodging. When I think

that Henry Bowes Howard, Earl of Berkshire, has in his stable

twenty-four state carriages, of which one is mounted in silver and

another in gold--good heavens! I know that every one has not got

twenty-four state carriages; but there is no need to complain for all

that. Because you were cold one night, what was that to him? It concerns

you only. Others besides you suffer cold and hunger. Don't you know

that without that cold, Dea would not have been blind, and if Dea were

not blind she would not love you? Think of that, you fool! And, besides,

if all the people who are lost were to complain, there would be a pretty

tumult! Silence is the rule. I have no doubt that heaven imposes silence

on the damned, otherwise heaven itself would be punished by their

everlasting cry. The happiness of Olympus is bought by the silence of

Cocytus. Then, people, be silent! I do better myself; I approve and

admire. Just now I was enumerating the lords, and I ought to add to the

list two archbishops and twenty-four bishops. Truly, I am quite affected

when I think of it! I remember to have seen at the tithe-gathering of

the Rev. Dean of Raphoe, who combined the peerage with the church, a

great tithe of beautiful wheat taken from the peasants in the

neighbourhood, and which the dean had not been at the trouble of

growing. This left him time to say his prayers. Do you know that Lord

467

The Man Who Laughs