the month
of June, under the fresh groves, with the song of the nightingale and
the soft murmuring of the brooks in his ear," he began to wonder
restlessly why he had never tasted in their plenitude the vivid
sentiments which he was conscious of possessing in reserve, or any of
that intoxicating delight which he felt potentially existent in his
soul. Why had he been created with faculties so exquisite, to be left
thus unused and unfruitful? The feeling of his own quality, with this of
a certain injustice and waste superadded, brought warm tears which he
loved to let flow. Visions of the past, from girl playmates of his youth
down to the Venetian courtesan, thronged in fluttering tumult into his
brain. He saw himself surrounded by a seraglio of houris whom he had
known, until his blood was all aflame and his head in a whirl. His
imagination was kindled into deadly activity. "The impossibility of
reaching to the real beings plunged me into the land of chimera; and
seeing nothing actual that rose to the height of my delirium, I
nourished it in an ideal world, which my creative imagination had soon
peopled with beings after my heart's desire. In my continual ecstasies,
I made myself drunk with torrents of the most delicious sentiments that
ever entered the heart of man. Forgetting absolutely the whole human
race, I invented for myself societies of perfect creatures, as heavenly
for their virtues as their beauties; sure, tender, faithful friends,
such as I never found in our nether world. I had such a passion for
haunting this empyrean with all its charming objects, that I passed
hours and days in it without counting them as they went by; and losing
recollection of everything else, I had hardly swallowed a morsel in hot
haste, before I began to burn to run off in search of my beloved groves.
If, when I was ready to start for the enchanted world, I saw unhappy
mortals coming to detain me on the dull earth, I could neither moderate
nor hide my spleen, and, no longer master over myself, I used to give
them greeting so rough that it might well be called brutal."[263]

This terrific malady was something of a very different kind from the
tranquil sensuousness of the days in Savoy, when the blood was young,
and life was not complicated with memories, and the sweet freshness of
nature made existence enough. Then his supreme expansion had been
attended with a kind of divine repose, and had found edifying voice in
devout acknowledgmen