"Give me," says St. Augustine, "a man who loves, and he will understand what I say."
Youth laughs at those disappointments; it is charming, happy: in vain do you tell it that the time will come when it too will know a similar bitterness; it thrusts you aside with its light wing and flies away in search of pleasures: it is right, if it dies with them.
Here is Bayreuth, a reminiscence of another sort. This town stands in the middle of a hollow plain of crops mixed with meadow-land: it has wide streets, low houses, a weak population. In the time of Voltaire and Frederic II., the Margravine of Bayreuth was famous; her death inspired the bard of Ferney with the only ode in which he displayed any lyrical talent:
Tu ne chanteras plus, solitaire Sylvandre,
Dans ce palais des arts, où les sons de ta voix
Contre les préjugés osaient se faire entendre,
Et de l'humanité faisaient parler les droits[9].
The poet here praises himself justly, were it not that there was no one less solitary in the world than Voltaire-Sylvander. The poet adds, addressing the Margravine:
Des tranquilles hauteurs de la philosophie,
Ta pitié contemplait, avec des yeux sereins,
Les fantômes changeants du songes de la vie,
Tant de rêves détruits, tant de projets si vains[10].
Bayreuth.
From the height of a palace, it is easy to look down with calm eyes upon the poor devils who pass along the street; but those lines are none the less mightily true.... Who could feel them better than myself? I have seen so many phantoms defile through the dream of life! At this very moment, have I not been looking on the three royal larvæ in the Castle in Prague and on the daughter of Marie-Antoinette at Carlsbad? In 1733, just a century ago, what was it occupied men's minds? Had they the least idea of what is now? When Frederic was married, in 1733, under the rough tutelage of his father, had he, in Mathew Laensberg[11], seen M. de Tournon[12] Intendant of Bayreuth and leaving his intendance for the "Prefectship" of Rome? In 1933, the traveller passing through Franconia will ask of my shade if I could have guessed the facts of which he will be a witness.
While I was breakfasting, I read some lessons which a German lady, young and pretty, of course, was writing to a master's dictation: