because of my nationality,
because I am my father's son. I feel myself incapable of thinking of the
future, of practising thoroughly French habits of economy. If my
purse is full, I soon empty it; after which I condemn myself to
privations--no, that does not express it--I enjoy them. According to me,
there is no true happiness into which a little suffering does not enter.
Besides, I have a taste for contrasts. At times I believe myself a
millionaire, I have the pretensions of a nabob; I give full scope to my
fancies; the next day, my bed is hard and I live on bread-and-water,
and am perfectly happy. In short, I am a fool once in the year, and a
philosopher the rest of the time.'

"'The trouble is,' returned the abbe, 'that one day of folly will
sometimes suffice to compromise forever the future of a philosopher.'

"'Oh, reassure yourself,' replied he; 'my extravagances never are very
dangerous. There was method in Hamlet's madness, and there is always a
little reason in mine.'

"While making this declaration of principles, he had seated himself at
the piano, and idly began running his fingers over the keys. Suddenly he
began to sing a German song, which I got Abbe Miollens to translate
for me, and which is not long. The hero of the song is an amorous pine,
standing on the summit of a barren mountain of the north. He is alone;
he is weary; the snow and ice wrap him in a white mantle, and he spends
his dreary hours of leisure in dreaming of a palm, which in days of yore
he met, it seems, in his travels.

"M. Larinski sang this little melody with so much pathos that the good
abbe was touched, and I became anxious. Anxiety, once felt, is apt to
be constantly returning. I asked myself if he had met his palm in the
Engadine, and added aloud, rather dryly: 'Is the day of your departure
definitely fixed? will you not do us the favour of granting us a
reprieve?'

"He executed the most pearly chromatic scale, and replied: 'Alas!
madame, I am only deferring my departure on account of a letter that
cannot be much longer delayed; in less than a week, I shall have the
distress of bidding you farewell.'

"'You shall not leave,' said Abbe Miollens, 'without letting us hear
once again the poem of the pine. You sang it with so much soul that it
seemed to me you must be relating an episode of your own history. My
dear count, did you ever chance to dream of a palm?'

"He answered: 'I have no longer the right to dream; I am no long