enough troubles of my own, I willingly share
in those of a thousand imaginary persons, and I feel them as keenly as
if they were mine. What tears have I shed over the unhappiness of
Clarissa!

But if I thus seek for feigned afflictions, I find, in compensation, in
this imaginary world, the virtue, the goodness, the disinterestedness
which I have been unable to discover together in the real world in which
I exist. It is there that I find the wife that I desire, without temper,
without lightness, without subterfuge; I say nothing about beauty--you
can depend on my imagination for that! Then, closing the book which no
longer answers to my ideas, I take her by the hand, and we wander
together through a land a thousand times more delicious than that of
Eden. What painter can depict the scene of enchantment in which I have
placed the divinity of my heart? But when I am tired of love-making I
take up some poet, and set out again for another world.

_V.--In Prison Again_

O charming land of imagination which has been given to men to console
them for the realities of life, it is time for me to leave thee! This is
the day when certain persons pretend to give me back my freedom, as
though they had deprived me of it! As though it were in their power to
take it away from me for a single instant, and to hinder me from
scouring as I please the vast space always open before me! They have
prevented me from going out into a single town--Turin, a mere point on
the earth--but they have left to me the entire universe; immensity and
eternity have been at my service.

To-day, then, I am free, or rather I am going to be put back into irons.
The yoke of business is again going to weigh me down; I shall not be
able to take a step which is not measured by custom or duty. I shall be
fortunate if some capricious goddess does not make me forget one and the
other, and if I escape from this new and dangerous captivity.

Oh, why did they not let me complete my journey! Was it really to punish
me that they confined me in my room? In this country of delight which
contains all the good things, all the riches of the world? They might as
well have tried to chastise a mouse by shutting him up in a granary.

Yet never have I perceived more clearly that I have a double nature. All
the time that I am regretting my pleasures of the imagination, I feel
myself consoled by force. A secret power draws me away. It tells me that
I have need of the fresh air