thousand lesser ones in the wheel, in the kindly sympathies
with which the world abounds; that to him who bears no ill-will at
his heart--nay, rather loving all things that are lovable, with warm
attachments to all who have been kind to him, with strong sources of
happiness in his own tranquil thoughts--the wandering life would offer
many pleasures.

Most men live, as it were, with one story of their lives, the traits of
childhood maturing into manly features; their history consists of the
development of early character in circumstances of good or evil fortune.
They fall in love, they marry, they grow old, and they die--each
incident of their existence bearing on that before and that after, like
link upon link of some great chain. He, however, who throws himself like
a plank upon the waters, to be washed hither and thither as wind or
tide may drive him, has a very different experience. To him life is
a succession of episodes, each perfect in itself; the world is but a
number of tableaux, changing with climate and country--his sorrows
in France having no connection with his joys in Italy; his delights
in Spain living apart from his griefs on the Rhine. The past throws no
shadow on the future; his philosophy is to make the most of the present;
and he never forgets La Bruyere's maxim--'Il faut rire avant d'etre
heureux, _de peur de mourir sans avoir ri_.'

Now, if you don't like my philosophy, set it down as a dream, and here I
am awake once more.

And certainly I claim no great merit on the score of my vigilance; for
the tantararara that awoke me would have aroused the Seven Sleepers
themselves. Words are weak to convey the most distant conception of the
noise; it seemed as though ten thousand peacocks had congregated beneath
my window, and with brazen throats were bent on giving me a hideous
concert; the fiend-chorus in _Robert le Diable_ was a psalm-tune
compared to it. I started up and rushed to the casement; and there,
in the lawn beneath, beheld some twenty persons costumed in hunting
fashion, their horses foaming and splashed, their coats stained with
marks of the forest. But the uproar was soon comprehensible, owing to
some half-dozen of the party who performed on that most diabolical of
all human inventions, the _cor de chasse_.

Imagine, if you can, and thank your stars that it is only a work of
imagination, some twenty feet of brass pipe, worn belt-fashion over one
shoulder and under the opposite arm, one e