The Antoninos

'I have even rendered great services to humanity. Once, for example, [...] I found, one morning, a humming-bird in my living-room; it had come there trustingly, knowing that it was my house, but a gust of wind had slammed the door and it had been held prisioner all night between four walls.

It was perched on a cushion, minuscule and incapable of understanding, all courage gone, no longer trying to fly, weeping in one of the saddest voices I have ever heard, for one never hears one's own voice. I opened the window, it flew out and I have seldom felt happier, and I knew that I had not lived in vain'.