Oh no! I am sorry for the fireplace! Let us leave all as it is: we cannot reproduce what my reason has evoked. Let the sphere circle around, and let each various chimera disport with every mind! The Creator will turn all for the best: to-day the chill disturbs us, but the thunder of the summer does not terrify us.
I hear at all times of the good qualities of countrymen, what beautiful lives they lead, and how the law of nature is not trampled upon by them. “Their manners,” they assert, “are coarser, but their amusements are incomparably simpler than ours: they live in freedom with each other, do not drink nor eat according to the fashion.” ’Tis not true!
When we listen to serenades on a beautiful summer day, while limpid waterfalls make a rippling noise, and the shade of cedars protects us from the heat, the peasant hitches his horse to the plough and tears up the earth, or hauls a log, or, if it be winter, looks through dim windows, through which nothing can be seen, at the blizzard without.
Fireplace, I will not exchange you for all the treasures of the lords! You are often my consolation, and always pleasant and agreeable to me. Let sorrows be inevitable: joy is coextensive with them. You are the throne of my amusements; but I am satisfied with my books; I feel with them neither pain, nor think my room small, and I read them as my spirit prompts me.
But when I leave my book, and fix my eyes upon the fireplace, with what pleasure I recall the host of various incidents! I at once reproduce in my mind the picture of my youth, and the progress and cause of my cares; I even now, as it were, glance to the north, and south, and the capital, and the Finland border.
I accuse myself before thee, my Lord! I have in vain killed my youth; carried on the wave of habit, I have given my days and nights to dreaming. I, tossed now hither, now thither, hastened to make new acquaintances, and thought: “This is all a loan I make; some day the debt, I am sure, will be duly returned to me.”
’Tis time to adapt myself to the custom! I shall soon be forty years old: it is time to learn from experience that to judge people rightly, to know this world, to seek friends is a self-deception and vain endeavour of the heart. The measure of human indifference is in our days full to overflowing; ask for no examples: alas! there are too many of them.
In your presence all will praise you, but let there be an occasion for helping you, and your worth will be depreciated, or without saying a word they will walk away. If one be cunning, he will so oppress you that he will compel you to think all your life of him in tears; if he be foolish, he will, wherever he may meet you, cast a heap of stones before you and bar your way.
From all such evils my consolation art Thou, only God, God of all creation! I need nothing more, for I expect no happiness from men. A hundredfold more pleasant it is, staying at home, and not perceiving in it the temptations of the world, to live simply with your family and, modestly passing your time and vigorously communing with reason, to stir the wood in the fireplace.