better and more happily in a fruitful and lonely island, where nothing presented itself to me save smiling pictures, where nothing recalled saddening memories, where the fellowship of the few dwellers there was gentle and obliging, without being exciting enough to busy me incessantly, where, in short, I was free to surrender myself all day long to the promptings of my taste or to the most luxurious indolence....  As I came out from a long and most sweet musing fit, seeing myself surrounded by verdure and flowers and birds, and letting my eyes wander far over romantic shores that fringed a wide expanse of water bright as crystal, I fitted all these attractive objects into my dreams; and when at last I slowly recovered myself and recognised what was about me, I could not mark the point that cut off dream from reality, so equally did all things unite to endear to me the lonely retired life I led in this happy spot!  Why can that life not come back to me again?  Why can I not go finish my days in the beloved island, never to quit it, never again to see in it one dweller from the mainland, to bring back to me the memory of all the woes of every sort that they have delighted in heaping on my head for all these long years?...  Freed from the earthly passions engendered by the tumult of social life, my soul would many a time lift itself above this atmosphere, and commune beforehand with the heavenly intelligences, into whose number it trusts to be ere long taken.”

The exquisite dream, thus set to words of most soothing music, came soon to its end.  The full and perfect sufficience of life was abruptly disturbed.  The government of Berne gave him notice to quit the island and their territory within fifteen days.  He represented to the authorities that he was infirm and ill, that he knew not whither to go, and that travelling in wintry weather would be dangerous to his life.  He even made the most extraordinary request that any man in similar straits ever did make.  “In this extremity,” he wrote to their representative, “I only see one resource for me, and however frightful it may appear, I will adopt it, not only without repugnance, but with eagerness, if their excellencies will be good enough to give their consent.  It is that it should please them for me to pass the rest of my days in prison in one of their castles, or such other place in their states as they may think fit to select.  I will there live at my own expense, and I will give security never to put them to any cost.  I submit to be without paper or pen, or any communication from without, except so far as may be absolutely necessary, and through the channel of those who shall have charge of me.  Only let me have left, with the use of a few books, the liberty to walk occasionally in a garden, and I am content.  Do not suppose that an expedient, so violent in appearance, is the fruit of despair.  My mind is perfectly calm at this moment; I have taken time to think about it, and it