"It was his duty to guard me against bugaboos, but I have had no fear of them, since one of them has become my friend.
"I am superstitious, I believe in ghosts; but I defy them to approach my bed hereafter."
He blushed and did not finish the sentence. Poor child! the painful misery of his destiny, far from quenching his imagination, has excited it to intoxication, and I am not surprised that he shapes friendship to the romantic turn of his thoughts.
"You're mistaken," I said to him, "it is not my image, it is botany which guards you against spirits. There is no better remedy for foolish terrors than the study of nature."
"Always the pedant," he exclaimed, throwing his cap in my face.
July 23rd.
Vladimir Paulitch appeared yesterday at the end of dinner. The presence of this man occasions me an indefinable uneasiness. His coldness freezes me, and then his dogmatic tone; his smile of mocking politeness. He always knows in advance what you are going to say to him, and listens to you out of politeness. This Vladimir has the ironical intolerance characteristic of materialists. As to his professional ability there can be no doubt. The Count has entirely recovered; he is better than I have ever seen him. What vigor, what activity of mind! What confounds me is, that in our discussions, I come to see in him, in about the course of an hour, only the historian, the superior mind, the scholar; I forget entirely the man of the iron boots, the somnambulist, the persecutor of my Stephane, and I yield myself unreservedly to the charm of his conversation. Oh, men of letters! men of letters!
July 27th.
He said to me:
"I do not possess happiness yet; but it seems to me at moments, that I see it, that I touch it."