The picture seemed sordid somewhere, the contrast was so striking. In
a great city was no softness; hard, sharp angles everywhere, or at
best an artificial smoothness that veiled ugliness and squalor very
thinly. Human relationship worked like parts of a machine, cramped
into definite orbits, each wheel, each pulley, the smallest deviation
deemed erratic. In Bourcelles, the mountain village, there was more
latitude, room for expansion, space. The heart leaped up spontaneously
like a spring released. In the city this spring was held down rigidly
in place, pressed under as by a weight; and the weight, surely, was
that one for ever felt compelled to think of self--self in a rather
petty, shameful way--personal safety. In the streets, in the houses,
in public buildings, shops, and railway stations, even where people
met to eat and drink in order to keep alive, were Notice Boards of
caution and warning against their fellow kind. Instead of the kindly
and unnecessary, even ridiculous little Gygi, there were big, grave
policemen by the score, a whole army of them; and everywhere grinned
the Notice Boards, like automatic, dummy policemen, mocking joy with
their insulting warnings. The heart was oppressed with this constant
reminder that safety could only be secured by great care and trouble--
safety for the little personal self; protection from all kinds of
robbery, depredation, and attack; beware of pickpockets, the
proprietor is not responsible for overcoats and umbrellas even! And
burglar alarms and doors of steel and iron everywhere--an organised
defence from morning till night--against one's own kind.
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