_Tragic sky_. Term of an abstract order applied to a material thing. Man drinks light with the atmosphere. Thus they are right who say that the night air is not healthful for labor. Man is born a fireworshipper. Fireworks, conflagrations, incendiaries. If one imagine a born fireworshipper born a Parsee, one could create a story. VIII Misunderstanding of a countenance is the result of the eclipse of the real image by the hallucination born of it. Know then the joys of a bitter life, and pray, pray ceaselessly. Prayer is a store-house of energy. (Altar of the will. Moral dynamics. The sorcery of the sacraments. Hygiene of the soul.) Music deepens the sky. Jean Jacques said that he could not enter a restaurant without a certain emotion. For a timid nature, a ticket office somewhat resembles the tribunal of hell. Life has but one true attraction: the attraction of play. But if we care not whether we win or lose? IX Nations have great men only in spite of themselves--like families. They make every effort not to have them. Therefore, the great man must, in order to exist, possess an offensive force greater than the power of resistance developed by millions of individuals. Apropos of sleep, that sinister adventure of all our nights, we might say that men go to bed daily with an audacity that would be incomprehensible if we did not know that it is the result of ignorance of the danger. X There are tortoise-shell hides against which scorn is no longer a vengeance. Many friends, many gloves.[1] Those who have admired me were despised, I might even say were despicable, if I sought to flatter honest men. Girardin talk Latin! _Pecudesque locutae_. He belongs to an infidel Society to send Robert Houdin to the Arabs to convert them from the miracles. [Footnote 1: 'for fear of the itch' is added elsewhere.] XI These great, beautiful vessels, imperceptibly swaying (rocking) on the tranquil waters, these sturdy ships, with their idle, homesick air, do they not ask us, in a silent tongue: When do we sail for happiness? Not to forget the marvellous in drama, sorcery, romance. The background, the atmosphere in which a whole tale should be steeped. (See the Fall of the House of Usher, and refer this to the profound sensations of hashish and of opium.) XII Are there mathematical insanities, and idiots who think that two and two make three? In other words, can hallucination, if the words do not cry out (at being coupled), invade the affairs of pure reason? If, when a man is sunk in habits of sloth, of revery, of idleness, to the point of constantly deferring the important thing to the morrow, another man were to wake him in the morning with biting lash, and were to whip him pitilessly until, unable to work for pleasure, he worked for fear, that man, that flogger, would he not be truly the friend, the benefactor? Besides, one might declare that pleasure would follow, much more justly than is said "Love comes after marriage."