“Even with large means, we are ever but half and half at home, especially in the country, where we miss many things to which we have become accustomed in town.  The book for which we are most anxious is not to be had, and just the thing which we most wanted is forgotten.  We take to being domestic, only again to go out of ourselves; if we do not go astray of our own will and caprice, circumstances, passions, accidents, necessity, and one does not know what besides, manage it for us.”

Little did the Earl imagine how deeply his friend would be touched by these random observations.  It is a danger to which we are all of us exposed when we venture on general remarks in a society the circumstances of which we might have supposed were well enough known to us.  Such casual wounds, even from well-meaning, kindly-disposed people, were nothing new to Charlotte.  She so clearly, so thoroughly knew and understood the world, that it gave her no particular pain if it did happen that through somebody’s thoughtlessness or imprudence she had her attention forced into this or that unpleasant direction.  But it was very different with Ottilie.  At her half-conscious age, at which she rather felt than saw, and at which she was disposed, indeed was obliged, to turn her eyes away from what she should not or would not see, Ottilie was thrown by this melancholy conversation into the most pitiable state.  It rudely tore away the pleasant veil from before her eyes, and it seemed to her as if everything which had been done all this time for house and court, for park and garden, for all their wide environs, were utterly in vain, because he to whom it all belonged could not enjoy it; because he, like their present visitor, had been driven out to wander up and down in the world—­and, indeed, in the most perilous paths of it—­by those who were nearest and dearest to him.  She was accustomed to listen in silence, but on this occasion she sat on in the most painful condition; which, indeed, was made rather worse than better by what the stranger went on to say, as he continued with his peculiar, humorous gravity: 

“I think I am now on the right way.  I look upon myself steadily as a traveler, who renounces many things in order to enjoy more.  I am accustomed to change; it has become, indeed, a necessity to me; just as in the opera, people are always looking out for new and newer decorations, because there have already been so many.  I know very well what I am to expect from the best hotels, and what from the worst.  It may be as good or it may be as bad as it will, but I nowhere find anything to which I am accustomed, and in the end it comes to much the same thing whether we depend for our enjoyment entirely on the regular order of custom, or entirely on the caprices of accident.  I have never had to vex myself now, because this thing is mislaid, or that thing is lost; because the room in which I live is uninhabitable, and I must have it repaired; because