But what, then, is this human society, if one of its members can thus
disappear like a leaf carried away by the wind?

The hospital was near a barrack, at the entrance of which old men, women,
and children were quarrelling for the remains of the coarse bread which
the soldiers had given them in charity! Thus, beings like ourselves
daily wait in destitution on our compassion till we give them leave to
live! Whole troops of outcasts, in addition to the trials imposed on all
God's children, have to endure the pangs of cold, hunger, and
humiliation. Unhappy human commonwealth! Where man is in a worse
condition than the bee in its hive, or the ant in its subterranean city!

Ah! what then avails our reason? What is the use of so many high
faculties, if we are neither the wiser nor the happier for them? Which
of us would not exchange his life of labor and trouble with that of the
birds of the air, to whom the whole world is a life of joy?

How well I understand the complaint of Mao, in the popular tales of the
'Foyer Breton' who, when dying of hunger and thirst, says, as he looks at
the bullfinches rifling the fruit-trees:

"Alas! those birds are happier than Christians; they have no need of
inns, or butchers, or bakers, or gardeners. God's heaven belongs to
them, and earth spreads a continual feast before them! The tiny flies
are their game, ripe grass their cornfields, and hips and haws their
store of fruit. They have the right of taking everywhere, without paying
or asking leave: thus comes it that the little birds are happy, and sing
all the livelong day!"