k for, aim at, or argue about. Fortune had taken me by
the hand. One fine morning she had lifted me out of an abyss and put me
down on a bed of roses and made me a young gentleman. The eagerness of
others was for me but an amusing spectacle. My heart was interested
in the future only on one mysterious point, the love which I felt for
Edmee.

My illness, far from robbing me of my physical vigour, had but increased
it. I was no longer the heavy, sleepy animal, fatigued by digestion and
stupefied by weariness. I felt the vibrations of all my fibres filling
my soul with unknown harmonies; and I was astonished to discover within
myself faculties of which I had never suspected the use. My good kinfolk
were delighted at this, though apparently not surprised. They had
allowed themselves to augur so well of me from the beginning that it
seemed as if they had been accustomed all their lives to the trade of
civilizing barbarians.

The nervous system which had just been developed in me, and which made
me pay for the pleasures and advantages it brought by keen and constant
sufferings during the rest of my life, had rendered me specially
sensitive to impressions from without; and this quickness to feel the
effect of external things was helped by an organic vigour such as is
only found among animals or savages. I was astounded at the decay of
the faculties in other people. These men in spectacles, these women with
their sense of smell deadened by snuff, these premature graybeards,
deaf and gouty before their time, were painful to behold. To me society
seemed like a vast hospital; and when with my robust constitution I
found myself in the midst of these weaklings, it seemed to me that with
a puff of my breath I could have blown them into the air as if they had
been so much thistle-down.

This unfortunately led me into the error of yielding to that rather
stupid kind of pride which makes a man presume upon his natural gifts.
For a long time it induced me to neglect their real improvement, as if
this were a work of supererogation. The idea that gradually grew up in
me of the worthlessness of my fellows prevented me from rising above
those whom I henceforth looked upon as my inferiors. I did not
realize that society is made up of so many elements of little value in
themselves, but so skilfully and solidly put together that before adding
the least extraneous particle a man must be a qualified artificer. I did
not know that in this socie