tful years cannot fail to brace you up with the courage necessary
to bear the unfortunate years you have to go through, and we can even
surmise, with every probability of being right, that the certainty of
future happiness will soothe to a considerable extent the misery of the
first period.

You have already guessed, I have no doubt, the purpose of this lengthy
argument. The sagacious man, believe me, can never be utterly miserable,
and I most willingly agree with my friend Horace, who says that, on the
contrary, such a man is always happy.

'Nisi quum pituita molesta est.'

But, pray where is the man who is always suffering from a rheum?

The fact is that the fearful night I passed in the guardhouse of St. Mary
resulted for me in a slight loss and in a great gain. The small loss was
to be away from my dear Therese, but, being certain of seeing her within
ten days, the misfortune was not very great: as to the gain, it was in
experience the true school for a man. I gained a complete system against
thoughtlessness, a system of foresight. You may safely bet a hundred to
one that a young man who has once lost his purse or his passport, will
not lose either a second time. Each of those misfortunes has befallen me
once only, and I might have been very often the victim of them, if
experience had not taught me how much they were to be dreaded. A
thoughtless fellow is a man who has not yet found the word dread in the
dictionary of his life.

The officer who relieved my cross-grained Castilian on the following day
seemed of a different nature altogether; his prepossessing countenance
pleased me much. He was a Frenchman, and I must say that I have always
liked the French, and never the Spaniards; there is in the manners of the
first something so engaging, so obliging, that you feel attracted towards
them as towards a friend, whilst an air of unbecoming haughtiness gives
to the second a dark, forbidding countenance which certainly does not
prepossess in their favour. Yet I have often been duped by Frenchmen, and
never by Spaniards--a proof that we ought to mistrust our tastes.

The new officer, approaching me very politely, said to me,--

"To what chance, reverend sir, am I indebted for the honour of having you
in my custody?"

Ah! here was a way of speaking which restored to my lungs all their
elasticity! I gave him all the particulars of my misfortune, and he found
the mishap very amusing. But a man disposed to laugh a