but, perhaps, because it is only when happiness thus whispers low in
our ear, and no other men know, that it is not according us joys
that are filched from our brother's share. Then do we no longer say
to ourselves, as we look on those brothers: "How great is the
distance between such as these and myself," but in all simplicity do
we murmur at last to ourselves: "The loftier my thoughts become, the
less is there to divide me from the humblest of my fellow-creatures,
from those who are most plentiful on earth; and every step that I
take towards an uncertain ideal, is a step that brings me the nearer
to those whom I once despised, in the vanity and ignorance of my
earliest days."

After all, what is a humble life? It is thus we choose to term the
life that ignores itself, that drains itself dry in the place of its
birth--a life whose feelings and thoughts, whose desires and
passions, entwine themselves around the most insignificant things.
But it suffices to look at a life for that life to seem great. A
life in itself can be neither great nor small; the largeness is all
in the eye that surveys it; and an existence that all men hold to be
lofty and vast, is one that has long been accustomed to look loftily
on itself from within. If you have never done this, your life must
be narrow; but the man who watches you live will discern, in the
very obscurity of the corner you fill, an element of horizon, a
foothold to cling to, whence his thoughts will rise with surer and
more human strength. There is not an existence about us but at first
seems colourless, dreary, lethargic: what can our soul have in
common with that of an elderly spinster, a slow-witted ploughman, a
miser who worships his gold? Can any connection exist between such
as these and a deep-rooted feeling, a boundless love for humanity,
an interest time cannot stale? But let a Balzac step forward and