What is a man's life to me? Not _that_," he said, and he
snapped his thumb-nail against his teeth. "A man, in short, is
everything to me, or just nothing at all. Less than nothing if his
name happens to be Poiret; you can crush him like a bug, he is flat
and he is offensive. But a man is a god when he is like you; he is not
a machine covered with a skin, but a theatre in which the greatest
sentiments are displayed--great thoughts and feelings--and for these,
and these only, I live. A sentiment--what is that but the whole world
in a thought? Look at Father Goriot. For him, his two girls are the
whole universe; they are the clue by which he finds his way through
creation. Well, for my own part, I have fathomed the depths of life,
there is only one real sentiment--comradeship between man and man.
Pierre and Jaffier, that is my passion. I knew _Venice Preserved_ by
heart. Have you met many men plucky enough when a comrade says, 'Let
us bury a dead body!' to go and do it without a word or plaguing him
by taking a high moral tone? I have done it myself. I should not talk
like this to just everybody, but you are not like an ordinary man; one
can talk to you, you can understand things.
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