Little Poems in Prose

cute the most absurd and even the most dan- gerous acts. One of my friends, the most inoffensive dreamer that ever lived, once set fire to a for- est to see, he said, if it would catch fire as eas- ily as people generally say, Ten times running the experiment failed, but at the eleventh it succeeded much too well. Another will light a cigar close to a barrel of gunpowder in order to see, to know, to tempt Fate, to force himself to give proof of his en- ergy; to ape the gamester, to know the pleas- ures of anxiety; and this incited by caprice, by idleness, by nothing at all. This kind of energy springs from boredom and reverie, and those in whom it so obsti- nately appears are in general, as I have said, the most indolent and dreamy of all beings. Another, so mightily timid that he lowers his eyes even before the glances of his fellows, so that he must pull together all his little will to enter a café or a box-office, where the clerks seemed to him clothed with the majesty of Mi- nos, Aeacus, and Rhadamanthus, will suddenly throw himself on the neck of an old man who happens to be passing and will kiss him enthu- siastically before the astonished crowd. Why? Because . . . because this counte- nance was irresistibly sympathetic to him?