place at the table; and we remain standing so humbly before you that your conscience permits it. But then true justice will triumph. It may spare you, but it will no longer wrong us. You will not always have the place of honor, and we will not always take the foot of the table.
161. The sluggards say to me: If you had found out how to be rich and happy without labor, all the world would have thanked you for it. But when you invite us to a painful, wearisome, and humiliating task, who will give your words any consideration? You would persuade the government that the primitive law is founded on labor for bread. But many well-educated people see the law only as through an obscure mist. Must we then deceive ourselves for bread? What is the use of writing on a subject that is not worth the trouble? Or of speaking, even, when for fifteen or twenty kopecks one may have a measure of grain?
In fine, if this labor leads to salvation, all educated persons, and above all the priests, should hasten to undertake it. But they disdain it, and like better a life of ease. Then there is nothing in it of value to salvation. The theory you maintain is but as a tale in the Arabian Nights.
162. The principal scourge of our class, that which throws us in spite of ourselves into misery, dejection, and all similar unhappiness, is the division of goods among brothers. It is impossible to speak of this evil in few words.
