1All this time I have spent among my writing tablets and books in the most delightful peace. 1'How,' you ask, 'could you do that in the city?' 1The races were on, a kind of spectacle by which I am not held in the slightest. 1Nothing new, nothing varied, nothing which it is not enough to have watched once. 2So I marvel all the more that so many thousands of men should so childishly long, again and again, to see horses running and men standing on chariots. 2If, however, they were drawn either by the speed of the horses or by the skill of the men, there would be some reason in it; 2as it is, they favour a cloth, they love a cloth, and if in the very race and in the middle of the contest this colour were moved over there and that one over here, their enthusiasm and favour will move across too, and suddenly they will abandon those drivers and those horses whom they recognise from far off, whose names they shout again and again.
3Such favour, such weight in one very cheap tunic — I pass over the common crowd, which is cheaper than a tunic, but among certain serious men; 3when I recall these men sitting so insatiably at a thing so empty, dull and endlessly repeated, I take some pleasure in the fact that I am not taken by this pleasure. 4And during these days, which others waste in the idlest of occupations, I most gladly devote my leisure to literature. 4Farewell.