Oh, liberty! liberty! our sole happiness, sole hope, sole dream! Of all the miserable creatures, of all classes of individuals, of all orders of workers, of all the men who daily fight the hard battle of life, these are the most to be pitied, on these does fortune bestow the fewest of her favours. No one believes this,--no one knows it. They are powerless to complain; they cannot revolt; they remain gagged and bound in their misery, the shamefaced misery of quill-drivers. They have gone through a course of study, they understand law, they have taken a degree, perhaps. How dearly I like that dedication by Jules Vallès: "To all those, who, nourished upon Greek and Latin, have died of starvation." And what do they earn, these starvelings? Eight to fifteen hundred francs, (thirty-two to sixty pounds) a year! Clerks in gloomy chambers, or clerks in office, you should read every morning over the door of your fatal prison, Dante's famous phrase: "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!" They are but twenty when they first enter, and will remain till sixty or longer. During this long period not an event takes place! Their whole life slips away in the dark little bureau, ever the same, carpeted with green portfolios. They enter young, at the age of vigorous hopes; they leave in old age, when death is at hand. All the harvest of recollections that we make in a life-time, the unexpected events, our loves,--gentle or tragic memories, our adventures, all the chances of a free existence, are unknown to these convicts. The days, the weeks, the months, the seasons, the years, all are like. They begin the day's work at the same hour; at the same hour, they breakfast; at the same hour, they leave; and this goes on for sixty or seventy years. Four accidents only constitute landmarks in their existence: marriage, the birth of the first-born, and the death of father, or mother. Nothing else; stop though, yes, a rise in salary. They know nothing of ordinary life, nothing of the world! Unknown to them are the days of cheerful sunshine in the streets, and idle wanderings through the fields, for they are never released before the appointed hour. They become voluntary prisoners at eight o'clock in the morning, and at six, the prison doors are opened for them, when night is at hand. But, as a compensation, they have, for a whole fortnight in the year, the right,--a right indeed much discussed, hardly bargained for and grudgingly granted,--to remain shut up in their lodgings. For where can they go without money?