Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/165

 WHAT BOURGET THINKS OF US

their happiness to the interviewer. They feel pretty striped, but they remember with reverent recog nition that they had sugar between the cuts. True, sugar with sand in it, but sugar. And true, they had some trouble to tell which was sugar and which w r as sand, because the sugar itself looked just like the sand, and also had a gravelly taste; still, they knew that the sugar was there, and would have been very good sugar indeed if it had been screened. Yes, they are pleased; not noisily so, but pleased; invaded, or streaked, as one may say, with little recurrent shivers of joy subdued joy, so to speak, not the overdone kind. And they commune to gether, these, and massage each other with comfort ing sayings, in a sweet spirit of resignation and thankfulness, mixing these elements in the same proportions as the sugar and the sand, as a memo rial, and saying, the one to the other, and to the interviewer: &quot;It was severe yes, it was bitterly severe; but oh, how true it was; and it will do us so much good!&quot;

If it isn t Deportment, what is left? It was at this point that I seemed to get on the right track at last. M. Bourget would teach us to know ourselves; that was it: he would reveal us to ourselves. That would be an education. He would explain us to ourselves. Then we should understand ourselves; and after that be able to go on more intelligently.

It seemed a doubtful scheme. He could explain

us to himself. that would be easy. That would be

the same as the naturalist explaining the bug to

himself. But to explain the bug to the bug that

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