“Future! Eternal Providence! If you take away from man all that he derives from his own heart, all that he associates with the idea of a godhead, and all that belongs to the law of nature, what, then, do you leave him?
“What has already happened to me, and what may still follow, I look upon as two black, impenetrable curtains hanging over the two extremities of human life, and which no mortal has ever yet drawn aside. Many hundred generations have stood before the second of these curtains, casting the light of their torches upon its folds, speculating and guessing as to what it may conceal. Many have beheld themselves, in the magnified image of their passions, reflected upon the curtain which hides futurity from their gaze, and have turned away shuddering from their own shadows. Poets, philosophers, and statesmen have painted their fancies on the curtain in brighter or more sombre colors, according as their own prospects were bright or gloomy. Many a juggler has also taken advantage of the universal curiosity, and by well-managed deceptions led astray the excited imagination. A deep silence reigns behind this curtain; no one who passes beyond it answers any questions; all the reply is an empty echo, like the sound yielded by a vault.
“Sooner or later all must go behind this curtain, and they approach it with fear and trembling, in doubt who may be waiting there behind to receive them; quid sit id, quod tanturn morituri vident. There have been infidels who asserted that this curtain only deluded mankind, and that we saw nothing behind it, because there was nothing there to see; but, to convince them, they were quickly sent behind it themselves.”
“It was indeed a rash conclusion,” said I, “if they had no better ground for it than that they saw nothing themselves.”
“You see, my dear friend, I am modest enough not to wish to look behind this curtain, and the wisest course will doubtless be to abstain from all curiosity. But while I draw this impassable circle around me, and confine myself within the bounds of present existence, this small point of time, which I was in danger of neglecting in useless researches, becomes the more important to me. What you call the chief end and aim of my existence concerns me no longer. I cannot escape my destiny; I cannot promote its consummation; but I know, and firmly believe, that I am here to accomplish some end, and that I do accomplish it. But the means which nature has chosen to fulfil my destiny are so much the more sacred to me; to me it is everything; my morality, my happiness. All the rest I shall never learn. I am like a messenger who carries a sealed letter to its place of destination. What the letter contains is indifferent to him; his business is only to earn his fee for carrying it.”
“Alas!” said I, “how poor a thing you would leave me!”
“But in what a labyrinth have we lost ourselves!” exclaimed the prince, looking with a smile at the table on which the rouleaus lay. “After all perhaps not far from the mark,” continued he; “you will now no doubt understand my reasons for this new mode of life. I could not so suddenly tear myself away from my fancied wealth, could not so readily separate the props of my morality and happiness from the pleasing dream with which everything within me was so closely bound up. I longed for the frivolity which seems to render the existence of most of those about me endurable to themselves. Everything which precluded reflection was welcome to me. Shall I confess it to you? I wished to lower myself, in order to destroy this source of my griefs, by deadening the power of reflection.”
Here we were interrupted by a visit. In my next I shall have to communicate to you a piece of news, which, from the tenor of a conversation like the one of to-day, you would scarcely have anticipated.