y to still his suffering by
recollection of the days that he had passed in the woods of Montmorency,
with his dog, the birds, the deer, for his companions. "As I got up with
the sun to watch his rising from my garden, if I saw the day was going
to be fine, my first wish was that neither letters nor visits might come
to disturb its charm. After having given the morning to divers tasks
which I fulfilled with all the more pleasure that I could put them off
to another time if I chose, I hastened to eat my dinner, so as to escape
from the importunate and make myself a longer afternoon. Before one
o'clock, even on days of fiercest heat, I used to start in the blaze of
the sun, along with my faithful Achates, hurrying my steps lest some one
should lay hold of me before I could get away. But when I had once
passed a certain corner, with what beating of the heart, with what
radiant joy, did I begin to breathe freely, as I felt myself safe and my
own master for the rest of the day! Then with easier pace I went in
search of some wild and desert spot in the forest, where there was
nothing to show the hand of man, or to speak of servitude and
domination; some refuge where I could fancy myself its discoverer, and
where no inopportune third person came to interfere between nature and
me. She seemed to spread out before my eyes a magnificence that was
always new. The gold of the broom and the purple of the heather struck
my eyes with a glorious splendour that went to my very heart; the
majesty of the trees that covered me with their shadow, the delicacy of
the shrubs that surrounded me, the astonishing variety of grasses and
flowers that I trod under foot, kept my mind in a continual alternation
of attention and delight.... My imagination did not leave the earth thus
superbly arrayed without inhabitants. I formed a charming society, of
which I did not feel myself unworthy; I made a golden age to please my
own fancy, and filling up these fair days with all those scenes of my
life that had left sweet memories behind, and all that my heart could
yet desire or hope in scenes to come, I waxed tender even to shedding
tears over the true pleasures of humanity, pleasures so delicious, so
pure, and henceforth so far from the reach of men. Ah, if in such
moments any ideas of Paris, of the age, of my little aureole as author,
came to trouble my dreams, with what disdain did I drive them out, to
deliver myself without distraction to the exquisite se