Henry was quite right when he said that idleness was the source of all my miseries; so I have spent my time in the making of living pictures on which I can at all times gaze. It has taken much toil, and even study, to surround myself with all these marvels of creation, to get together all the scattered riches of this Garden of Eden.
Sages may tell us that these are but childish pleasures, but it is their simplicity that constitutes their pleasantness.
Serious immaterial joys are but perishable, while the thousand little pleasures a youthful nature can always discover in his reveries, though trifling and momentary, are constantly being renewed, for the imagination that produces them is inexhaustible.
Now that I have lived in such adorable independence, the life of society, with its exigencies, appears to me as a sort of order whose rules are as strict as those of the "Trappists."
I do not know which I would prefer, to be comfortably clothed in a serge gown, or cramped up in a tight coat; to breathe the pure fresh air of the garden I cultivated or the stifling atmosphere of a crowded salon; to kneel through the service of matins, or to stand all evening at some reception. In fact, I think I should as willingly choose the meditative silence of the cloister as the chatter of the salon; and say with about as much interest, "Brother, we must die," of the religious order, as "Brother, we must amuse ourselves," of the social order.
One thing only astonishes me, it is that I have been so long without knowing where true happiness lies.
When I think of the burdensome, obscure, and narrow life that most men impose upon themselves, through routine, in unhealthy cities, in damp climates, with hardly a ray of sunshine, without flowers, without perfume, surrounded by a degenerate, ugly, and sickly race, when they could live as I do without a care, as a monarch among the exquisite beauties of nature in a marvellous climate, I sometimes fear that my paradise will suddenly be invaded.
Thus I congratulate myself every day on my determination, my cup runs over with pleasure, my most painful remembrances fade away from my mind, and my soul has become so dulled from intoxicating joys, that the past has become a mere dream of misery.
Hélène, Marguerite, Falmouth, the remembrance of you is growing dim, far away, hidden under a beautiful cloud. I sometimes wonder how we could have caused each other so much suffering.
But what do I hear under my windows? It is the sound of the Albanian harp. It is Daphné, who invites Noémi and Anathasia to dance the national dance, the Romaïque.