"Very well—as you are determined to give me compliments instead of reasons, I will not persist. Charles be it then, but you must call me Ernest."
"Yes, Ernest."
The low musical words went to his heart, and broke down every barrier. They were bosom friends from that moment, and walked on in perfect confidence.
"Why did you regret your youth, Ernest?" said Hoffland. "I thought young men looked forward impatiently to their full manhood—twenty-five or thirty; though I do not," he added with a smile.
"They do; but it is only another proof of the blindness of youth."
"Is youth blind?"
"Blind, because it cannot see that all the delights of ambition, the victories of mind, the triumphs and successes of the brain, are mere dust and ashes compared with what it costs to obtain them—the innocence of the heart, the illusions of its youthful hope."
"Ah! are illusions to be desired?"
"At least they are a sweet suffering, a bitter delight."
"Even when one wakes from them to find every thing untrue—despair alone left?"