which forces every germ to develop into life. On the other hand I
felt saddened to think that, whatever effort we scholars may make to
preserve dead things from passing away, we are labouring painfully
in vain. Whatever has lived becomes the necessary food of new
existences. And the Arab who builds himself a hut out of the marble
fragments of a Palmyra temple is really more of a philosopher than
all the guardians of museums at London, Munich, or Paris.


August 11.

All day long I have been classifying MSS.... The sun came in through
the loft uncurtained windows; and, during my reading, often very
interesting, I could hear the languid bumblebees bump heavily against
the windows, and the flies intoxicated with light and heat, making
their wings hum in circles around my head. So loud became their
humming about three o'clock that I looked up from the document I was
reading--a document containing very precious materials for the history
of Melun in the thirteenth century--to watch the concentric movements
of those tiny creatures. "Bestions," Lafontaine calls them: he
found this form of the word in the old popular speech, whence also
the term, tapisserie-a-bestions, applied to figured tapestry. I
was compelled to confess that the effect of heat upon the wings of a
fly is totally different from that it exerts upon the brain of a
paleographical archivist; for I found it very difficult to think,
and a rather pleasant languor weighing upon me, from which I could
rouse myself only by a very determined effort. The dinner-bell then
startled me in the midst of my labours; and I had barely time to put
on my new dress-coat, so as to make a respectable appearance before
Madame de Gabry.