"Michel," said Magnani, striking his forehead, "you have won! I must absolve you and spare you my remonstrances henceforth! But I am suffering, I am suffering terribly! Your words cause me very great pain!" "How so, my dear Magnani?" "That is my secret, and yet I tell it to you without betraying its sanctity. Can you possibly suppose that I have not some legitimate ambition, some secret, deep-rooted desire to set myself free from the servitude in which I live? Don't you know that all men have at the bottom of their hearts the desire to be happy? And do you suppose that the consciousness of a joyless duty causes me to wallow in delight? "Listen and judge of my martyrdom. I have loved madly for five years a woman whose rank in society places her as far above me as heaven is above the earth. Having always considered it impossible that she should ever bestow so much as a compassionate glance upon me, I cultivated a sort of gloomy satisfaction in my suffering, my poverty, my forced nullity among my fellowmen. With a bitter feeling at my heart, I determined not to imitate those who are determined to succeed and who expose themselves to the risk of being scoffed at from above and from below. If I were one of them, I thought, perhaps the day would come when I might gallantly raise to my lips the hand of her whom I adore. But as soon as I opened my mouth to reveal the mystery of my passion, I should undoubtedly be spurned, laughed at, trampled under foot; I prefer to remain lost in the dust of my trade, and never to carry my insane presumption so far as her feet. I prefer that she should continue to believe it impossible that I could ever dream of aspiring to her. At all events, while I wear the livery of the mechanic, she will respect the suffering of which she knows nothing; she will not intensify it by discovering it, by blushing because she inspired it, by deeming it necessary to protect herself from it. Now, she passes me as she passes anything which is of no consequence to her, but which she does not consider that she has the right to spurn and crush. She bows to me, smiles at me, and speaks to me as to a being of a different nature from her own: that instinct is not manifest, but it is in her; I feel it and I understand it. At all events, she does not think of humiliating me, she would not do it; and the less reason I have for priding myself upon the possibility of pleasing her, the less do I fear that she will insult me by her pity. All this would change if I were a painter or a poet, if I could present her with her portrait done by my trembling hand, or with a sonnet indited by me in her honor; she would smile differently, she would speak differently. There would be reserve, mockery, or compassion in her kindness, according as I should have succeeded or failed in my artistic efforts. Oh! how far that would remove me from her, how much lower it would leave me than I now am! I prefer to be the mechanic who