ulfil a duty! It bores you to be like other men?
Well!
You will be different. Labor is the law; he who rejects it will find ennui his torment. You do not wish to be a workingman, you will be a slave. Toil lets go of you on one side only to grasp you again on the other.
You do not desire to be its friend, you shall be its negro slave.
Ah!
You would have none of the honest weariness of men, you shall have the sweat of the damned.
Where others sing, you will rattle in your throat.
You will see afar off, from below, other men at work; it will seem to you that they are resting. The laborer, the harvester, the sailor, the blacksmith, will appear to you in glory like the blessed spirits in paradise.
What radiance surrounds the forge!
To guide the plough, to bind the sheaves, is joy.
The bark at liberty in the wind, what delight!
Do you, lazy idler, delve, drag on, roll, march!
Drag your halter. You are a beast of burden in the team of hell!
Ah!
To do nothing is your object.
Well, not a week, not a day, not an hour shall you have free from oppression.
You will be able to lift nothing without anguish.
Every minute that passes will make your muscles crack. What is a feather to others will be a rock to you.
The simplest things will become steep acclivities.
Life will become monstrous all about you.