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254 reckoning the fallow years with those of produce, bring me in one hundred and twenty livres, which is little enough, God knows.

But if every individual were to have his contingent, would that be no more than five louis d'ors a year?

.—Certainly not, according to our calculation, which I have a little amplified. Such is the state of human nature. Our life and our fortune have narrow limits. In Paris they do not, one with another, live above twenty-two or twenty-three years; and, one with another, have not, at the most, above a hundred and twenty livres a year to spend. So that your food, your raiment, your lodging, your movables, are all represented by the sum of one hundred and twenty livres.

.—Alas! What have I done to you, that you thus abridge me of my fortune and life? Can it then be true that I have but three and twenty years to live, unless I rob my fellow-creatures of their share?

.—This is incontestable in the good city of Paris. But from these twenty-three years you must deduct ten, at the least, for your childhood, as childhood is not an enjoyment of life; it is a preparation; it is the porch of the edifice; it is the tree that has not yet given fruits; it is the dawn of a day. Then again, from the thirteen years which remain to you, deduct the time of sleep, and that of tiresomeness of life, and that will be at least