to ours, even as it will bear its fruits in the future.

Young, man accepts life as it comes, enamored of yestereen, careless
of the day, heeding little the morrow. Youth is the springtide
with its dewy dawns and its beautiful nights; if sometimes a
storm clouds the sky, it gathers, mutters and disperses, leaving
the sky bluer, the atmosphere purer, and Nature more smiling
than before. What use is there in reflecting on this storm that
passes swift as a caprice, ephemeral as a fancy? Before we have
discovered the secret of the meteorological enigma, the storm
will have disappeared.

But it is not thus with the terrible phenomena, which at the
close of summer, threaten our harvests; or in the midst of autumn,
assail our vintages; we ask whither they go, we query whence
they come, we seek a means to prevent them.

To the thinker, the historian, the poet, there is a far deeper
subject for reflection in revolutions, these tempests of the
social atmosphere which drench the earth with blood, and crush
an entire generation of men, than in those upheavals of nature
which deluge a harvest, or flay the vineyards with hail--that
is to say, the fruits of a single harvest, wreaking an injury,
which can at the worst be repaired the ensuing year; unless the
Lord be in His days of wrath.

Thus, in other days, be it forgetfulness, heedlessness or ignorance
perhaps--(blessed he who is ignorant! a fool he who is wise!)--in
other days in relating the story which I am going to tell you
to-day I would, without pausing at the place where the first