Sealed Lips — page 256: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

248 SEALED LIPS, were constantly rising; Patrice did more for the others than he did for himself. In a few months the bordj had a school for the children, a chapel officiated in every week by a priest, and often vis- ited by Pere Chrysostome, an embryo hospital and an apothecary. Roads were laid out through the woods, villages of wood-cutters were organized, and a saw-mill had just been completed. “M’siou Patriz,” as the Arabs called him, was by turns engineer, doctor, general nurse, and primary in- spector. He passed his days on horseback, and his nights, often very short, were very wakeful. Hope- less and nameless love always held the same place in his heart, but it was not the chief wheel in the mechanism of his life. He never ceased for one second to love, but he could, thanks to work, pass entire hours without suffering. Work isthe great liberator of the human soul conquered by sorrow. It not only opens the prison doors—often voluntary—which the remembrance of an unhappy moment has kept closed, but often with its rude hand it pushes us over the gloomy threshold. In spite of us at first we drag our heavy, weary steps, without ceasing to be reminded of the fatal souvenir by the bruising of the chains and the sight of the afflicted in distress which seems to fasten tous. But soon, ike captives re- compensed for their courageous efforts, we feel the iron weight diminish, and we assume the agile vigor of a free man; we become. wrestlers after Eomichbooks (€@)