My servant, Larive by name, had been much attached to my father; he was, after my father himself, probably the best man I had ever known.  He was of the same height, and wore the clothes my father had left him, having no livery.

He was of about the same age—­that is, his hair was turning gray, and during the twenty years he had lived with my father, he had learned some of his ways.  While I was pacing up and down the room after dinner, I heard him doing the same in the hall; although the door was open he did not enter, and not a word was spoken; but from time to time we would look at each other and weep.  The entire evening would pass thus, and it would be late in the night before I would ask for a light, or get one myself.

Everything about the house was left unchanged, not a piece of paper was moved.  The great leather armchair in which my father used to sit stood near the fire; his table and his books were just as he left them; I respected even the dust on these articles, which in life he never liked to see disturbed.  The walls of that solitary house, accustomed to silence and a most tranquil life, seemed to look down on me in pity as I sat in my father’s chair, enveloped in his dressing-gown.  A feeble voice seemed to whisper:  “Where is the father?  It is plain to see that this is an orphan.”

I received several letters from Paris, and replied to each that I desired to pass the summer alone in the country, as my father was accustomed to do.  I began to realize that in all evil there is some good, and that sorrow, whatever else may be said of it, is a means of repose.  Whatever the message brought by those who are sent by God, they always accomplish the happy result of awakening us from the sleep of the world, and when they speak, all are silent.  Passing sorrows blaspheme and accuse heaven; great sorrows neither accuse nor blaspheme—­they listen.

In the morning I passed entire hours in the contemplation of nature.  My windows overlooked a valley, in the midst of which arose a village steeple; all was plain and calm.  Spring, with its budding leaves and flowers, did not produce on me the sinister effect of which the poets speak, who find in the contrasts of life the mockery of death.  I looked upon the frivolous idea, if it was serious and not a simple antithesis made in pleasantry, as the conceit of a heart that has known no real experience.  The gambler who leaves the table at break of day, his eyes burning and hands empty, may feel that he is at war with nature, like the torch at some hideous vigil; but what can the budding leaves say to a child who mourns a lost father?  The tears of his eyes are sisters of the rose; the leaves of the willow are themselves tears.  It is when I look at the sky, the woods and the prairies, that I understand men who seek consolation.