REALITY MOBJB WONDERFUL THAN MOTION. 99 



wings, are they not, sooner or later, torn from us by the 

 necessities of the human condition, by other people who, 

 strangers to the ravishing poetries of love, bring us back to 

 the flat realities of their existence, and chain us down to the 

 earth among them, to employ ourselves there with vile cal- 

 culations and shameful lucre ? 



Seriously, are you not surprised at the wonders which sur- 

 round man, and which he does not take the pains to look at? 

 Are you not ashamed of the distance you may have travelled, 

 of all the fatigues you have undergone, of all the dangers 

 you have encountered, when you compare the accounts you 

 are able to give with those which I describe without leaving 

 my home? It is in vain that you reckon, in order to re- 

 establish the equilibrium, upon the embellishments which 

 every traveller adds to his canvass; I tell you nothing but 

 truths ; but truths that you could not have invented. False- 

 hood is always obliged to submit to the perplexing care of 

 resembling truth; truth holds on its march unimpeded by 

 this mean, embarrassing consideration. 



This reminds me of one of the most amusing fairy tales 

 I ever read : — and I have read many, for I loved them dearly 

 in by-gone days. 



Three princes were sent by the king, their father, to bring 

 back wonders from distant countries : the one whose present 

 should be the most extraordinary was to succeed him on the 

 throne. The youngest, whom the tale-teller evidently favours, 

 brought back a walnut, and his brothers smiled disdainfully. 

 The walnut was cracked, and there came out of it a hazel-nut, 

 the hazel-nut contained a pea, the pea a grain of hemp seed, 

 the grain of hemp seed a grain of millet; the grain of millet 

 ■was opened, and a piece of cloth was drawn from it twenty 

 ells long. 



When I read greedily so many beautiful stories, when I 

 saw so many genii, enchanters, fairies, beautiful princesses' and 

 loving and brave princes, many times was I wont, at the end 

 of the volume, to sit and carry on the vision in my thoughts ; 

 then I awoke, and wept with grief at only living in life, in- 

 stead of living in fairy tales; but I very early discovered 

 that real life contains a hundred times more wonders than 

 these charming fables : — and I became reconciled to my fate. 



