Is there not in all this enough to distress a sensitive mind, and to lead it to utter the complaint, "O God! wherefore hast Thou placed me in the midst of such contradictions? What am I to do? My father, the man whom I am bound to resemble most on earth, can I condemn him? Can I any the more blame my mother, or charge her with weakness--my mother, whose influence over me is so strong? What, then, am I to do? What must I become? Is life a desert wherein I am lost? Is there no one to guide me? Those who should direct are the first to mislead me. My father says: Do as I do; follow my example. My mother, with all the power of maternal affection, says: 'No, no, my son; do not follow your father, for if you do you will perish'." What shame should we take to ourselves for a state of things like this, and how much should we pity those who are its victims! And then the lower classes--the people,--who do penance under our eyes in toil and suffering, how can we help loving, how avoid compassionating, them? Undoubtedly, they have their faults, their frailties, and their vices; but are we not more blameworthy than they? The people are always what they are made. Is it their fault if the pernicious doctrines and scandals of the higher orders have stained the lower classes of society? Moreover, they have been treated without pity and without mercy. {26} They have been despoiled of all: even that last resource, hope, has been taken from them. They have been forbidden to dream of happiness. Heartless men have interposed between them and heaven, and have said to them, "Listen; your toil, your trials, your rags, your hunger, the hunger of your wives and children--such is your lot. You have nothing else to hope for; except, perchance, the pleasures of revelry." They have been deprived of every thing: they had hopes of a better future, which have been taken from them; they had God above, who has been robbed from them, and they have been told that heaven consisted in the enjoyments of earth. Meanwhile, they are miserable; and being miserable are, as it were, doomed already: yet, what have they done to merit this?