70 A TOIIR ROUND MT GARDEN. 



Well ! to obtain this happiness — and I remember no other 

 so great in my life — I had but to descend a flight of about 

 fourteen steps, and come from my own chamber into that 

 of the yellow chairs. And my chamber, so small, so poorly 

 furnished, what joys it has contained! It was there that 

 I made for her ten thousand verses, not one of which she 

 ever saw; it was there I wrote to her so many letters; it 

 was there that I re-read so many times the few letters she 

 ever wrote me, that the Alexandrian library itself could not 

 have supplied me with more reading. 



And that staircase — those fourteen steps which separated 

 us — how many times have I descended it and ascended it to 

 meet her, to meet her father or their servant, to see her door, 

 to see the bell she had touched, the rush mat upon which she 

 had placed her feet! and all in the hope that she would 

 recognise my step, that she would hear me ascend and 

 descend, that she might say, " There he is ! " 



I travelled three hundred leagues on that staircase, my 

 friend, and at each step met with a happiness, or, at least, an 

 emotion. 



How beautiful were the flowers of the spring of our life, 

 and how they have faded! how many things are dead within 

 us, for which we never dream of wearing mourning! so far 

 from that, we mistake our mutilations for useful retrench- 

 ments, we take pride from our losses, we call our infirmities 

 virtues; the stomach no longer digests properly, and we call 

 ourselves sober; our blood is chilled, and we say we have left 

 off loving, when, actually, love has left us; our hair, our 

 teeth die, and yet we seldom think that we must soon die 

 altogether. We worry, we torment oiu:selves for a future 

 which everything tells us we shaU never see. I knew a man 

 of eighty years of age, who frequently said — " Well, I really 

 must set about thinking of my future!" 



And yet we are not without warnings; everything speaks 

 of death. 



This house we live in was built for a man long since dead, 

 by masons who are likewise dead. These trees, under whose 

 shade we indulge in our reveries, were planted by gardeners 

 who are dead. The painters who created the pictures on 

 our walls are dead. Our clothes, our shoes, are made from 



