my side, with your white hands, in frost or heat, in storms and snow, when you will tremble as with fever, and your hands will become like spiders' feet.
Is it right that we alone shall endure these evils?
79. If you are so convinced that we eat the bread which you have gained by your labor, why do you sell it to us?—We do not compel you to do so. You beg us to buy it. Is it, then, our fault?
If all laborers understood the primitive law, they would not sell their bread, nor even give it away, except in certain admissible cases.—Where, then, would they get money?—They would know how to find it.
The idle man, like a door on its hinge, passes all his life lying on his bed. He has never seen how labor for bread is done. Thus he will scarcely have read ten articles in my book than he will throw it aside, saying, "It is vitriol!" This verdict appears to me profound and well merited.
It is not he who has found this word, but Providence has put it in his mouth, because to him the bread of his own labor would be as vitriol, while that gained by another's labor is sweeter than honey.
Do you see, my readers, how deceit loves itself? And if it did not seem lovely to itself, to whom could it appear agreeable or virtuous?
