When at the end Antony is drawn up to the loophole in the tower, bleeding, half dead; and his love, struggling with the heavy weight, can hardly pull him in; — I really cannot bear it, and sob like a child! What is it that moves me thus, and binds me to these men and women as if to those of my own blood? except the fact that we are truly of one family, we are Man, each and all of us.
I pity people from the bottom of my heart who know nothing of the profound pleasure of books; they are like disinherited children, but they do not know it, and boast that the present is enough for them. Blind geese! who can see no farther than the end of their noses! Not that I mean to deny the merits of the present; that would come with an ill grace from one like me, who have always kept my hands and my mouth open for anything good. No, those who find fault with the present are ignorant, or else they have a poor digestion: I understand a man who clasps all that he can reach to his heart, but there are those who reach nothing worth while: — he who contents himself with little is of small value; and I have always preferred to take the most that I could get in life.
In Adam's time the present was all very well; there were no clothes to wear, and only one woman
