"<p>Being a guest is one of the most delicious and tiring of all captivations. For in vain do the landlords say: 'With us, the guest does what he wants! He wakes and lies down when he wants! He eats what he wants! Of course, the guests and the housekeepers do nothing but look after each other from morning till night, listening to each other's wishes and their way of life, adapting themselves to each other. And yet the householders are freer because they are at home, they impose a kind of established order on the guest, who is forced to behave from morning till night as if he were doing what he wants when he is doing nothing but adapting to the householders. It is particularly rude to invite someone to stay all day or even overnight, for several days, in the countryside. It is an assassination against a free man's tastes, habits, time, pleasures, work, and order. 'Bring nothing but a nightgown and a toothbrush,' say the landlords; and behold, for a day or two you have been banished from your life, deprived of your freedom of action, and sometimes of your freedom of thought.</p> <p>To be a guest is bondage. It is a great spiritual rudeness and selfishness to invite someone to be your guest. Even to accept an invitation to dinner is a burdensome, tedious, and exhausting duty. It is best to meet friends in restaurants at nine o'clock in the evening and then go home at eleven o'clock, each having paid his own bill. Anything else is assassination and selfishness.</p>"