Whoever you may be, clad in the rags of misery or decked in the
sumptuous vestments of luxury, I restore you to that state of
luminous nudity which neither the fumes of wealth nor the poisons
of envious poverty dim. How persuade the rich that the
difference of conditions arises from an error in the accounts;
and how can the poor, in their beggary, conceive that the
proprietor possesses in good faith? To investigate the
sufferings of the laborer is to the idler the most intolerable of
amusements; just as to do justice to the fortunate is to the
miserable the bitterest of draughts.

You occupy a high position: I strip you of it; there you are,
free. There is too much optimism beneath this official costume,
too much subordination, too much idleness. Science demands an
insurrection of thought: now, the thought of an official is his
salary.

Your mistress, beautiful, passionate, artistic, is, I like to
believe, possessed only by you. That is, your soul, your spirit,
your conscience, have passed into the most charming object of
luxury that nature and art have produced for the eternal torment
of fascinated mortals. I separate you from this divine half of
yourself: at the present day it is too much to wish for justice
and at the same time to love a woman. To think with grandeur and
clearness, man must remove the lining of his nature and hold to
his masculine hypostasis. Besides, in the state in which I have
put you, your lover would no longer know you: remember the wife
of Job.

What is your religion? . . . . Forget your faith, and, through