the fleeting
and the infinite. To be away from one's home and yet to be always at
home; to be in the midst of the world, to see it, and yet to be hidden
from it; such are some of the least pleasures of these independent,
passionate, impartial minds which language can but awkwardly define. The
observer is a prince who everywhere enjoys his incognito. The amateur of
life makes the world his family, as the lover of the fair sex makes his
family of all beauties, discovered, discoverable, and indiscoverable, as
the lover of painting lives in an enchanted dreamland painted on canvas.
Thus the man who is in love with all life goes into a crowd as into an
immense electric battery. One might also compare him to a mirror as
immense as the crowd; to a conscious kaleidoscope which in each movement
represents the multiform life and the moving grace of all life's
elements. He is an ego insatiably hungry for the non-ego, every moment
rendering it and expressing it in images more vital than life itself,
which is always unstable and fugitive. "Any man," said Mr. G---- one
day, in one of those conversations which he lights up with intense look
and vivid gesture, "any man, not overcome by a sorrow so heavy that it
absorbs all the faculties, who is bored in the midst of a crowd is a
fool, a fool, and I despise him."

When Mr. G---- awakens and sees the blustering sun attacking the
window-panes, he says with remorse, with regret:--"What imperial order!
What a trumpet flourish of light! For hours already there has been light
everywhere, light lost by my sleep! How many lighted objects I might
have seen and have not seen!" And then he starts off, he watches in its
flow the river of vitality, so majestic and so brilliant. He admires the
eternal beauty and the astonishing harmony of life in great cities, a
harmony maintained in so providential a way in the tumult of human
liberty. He contemplates the landscapes of the great city, landscapes of
stone caressed by the mist or struck by the blows of the sun. He enjoys
the fine carriages, the fiery horses, the shining neatness of the
grooms, the dexterity of the valets, the walk of the gliding women, of
the beautiful children, happy that they are alive and dressed; in a
word, he enjoys the universal life. If a fashion, the cut of a piece of
clothing has been slightly changed, if bunches of ribbon or buckles have
been displaced by cockades, if the bonnet is larger and the back hair a
notch lower on