these things forced me by some mysterious power to look back along the course of my life to the distant days in your father’s house—­I—­These children!  Upon what different foundations our lives have been built!  I made them begin at the point I had gained when youth lay behind me.  My childhood commenced among the disorders of the government, clouded by my father’s exile and my mother’s death, on the brink of ruin.  That of the twins—­they are ten years old—­will soon be over—­and now, after enjoying pleasures not one of which was bestowed on me, they must endure the same sorrow.  But did not we have better ones?  What they daily possessed we only dreamed of in our simple garden.  How often I let you share the radiant visions which my soul revealed to me!  You willingly accompanied me into the splendid fairy world of my dreams.  All that my imagination conjured up during the years of quiet and repose accompanied me into my after-life.  Again and again I have beheld them, rich and powerful, upon the throne.  The means of rendering the vision a varity were at hand; and when I met the man whose own life resembled the realization of a dream, I recalled those childish fancies and made them facts.  The marvels with which I adorned my lover’s existence were childish dreams to which I gave tangible form.  This garden is an image of the life to which I intended to rise; in reality, fell.  We collected within the limits of this bit of earth everything which can delight the senses; not a single one is omitted in this narrow space, whose crowded maze of pleasures fairly impede freedom of movement.  Yet in your home, and guided by your wise father, I had learned to be content with so little, and commenced the struggle to attain peace.  That painless peace —­our chief good—­whence came it?  Through me it was lost to you both But the children—­I made them begin their lives in an arena of every disturbing influence; and now I see how their own healthy natures yearn to escape from the dazzling wealth of colour, the stupefying fragrance, the bewildering songs and twittering.  They long to return to the untilled earth, where the life of struggling mortals began.

“The boy casts away the baubles, to test his own creative powers.  The girl follows his example, and clings fast only to the doll in which she sees the living child, in order to do justice to the maternal instinct, the token of her sex.  But what they so eagerly desire is right, and shall be granted.  When I was ten years old, like the twins, my life and efforts were already directed towards one fixed goal.  They are still blindly following the objects set before them.  Let them return to the place whence their mother started, where she received everything good which is still hers.  They shall go to the garden of Epicurus, no matter whether it is the old one in Kanopus or elsewhere.  All that their mother beheld in vivid dreams, which she often strove with wanton extravagance to realize, has surrounded them from their birth and early satiated them.  When they enter life, they will scorn what merely stirs and dazzles the senses, and cling to the aspiration for painless peace of mind, if a wise guide directs them and protects them from the dangers which the teachings of Epicurus contain for youth.  I have found this guide, and you, too, will trust him—­I mean your brother Archibius.”