My forty-two days are coming to an end, and an equal space of time would not suffice to describe the rich country in which I am now travelling, for I have at last reached my bookshelf.  It contains nothing but novels—­yes, I shall be candid—­nothing but novels and a few choice poets.  As though I had not 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 and the open sky, and that solitude resembles death.  So here am I dressed and ready.  My door opens; I am rambling under the spacious porticoes of the street of Po; a thousand charming phantoms dance before my eyes.  Yes, this is her mansion, this is the door; I tremble with anticipation.