profit?_' Occasionally he cannot help letting out to them how far his
mind is removed from composure. 'Every day as I return home I found my
house as desolate as if it was yesterday you left me. In society the
same fancy pursues me, and scarcely ever quits me.' Music, as might be
surmised in so sensitive a nature, drove him almost beside himself with
its mysterious power of intensifying the dominant emotion. 'Whenever by
any chance I hear the harpsichord,' he says, 'melancholy seizes me. The
sound of the violin gives me such a heavy heart, that I am fain to leave
the company and hasten home.' He tossed in his bed at night, thinking he
heard the sound of weeping at Turin, making a thousand efforts to
picture to himself the looks of that 'orphan child of a living father'
whom he had never known, wondering if ever he should know her, and
battling with a myriad of black phantoms that seemed to rustle in his
curtains. 'But you, M. de Chevalier,' he said apologetically to the
correspondent to whom he told these dismal things, 'you are a father,
you know the cruel dreams of a waking man; if you were not of the
profession I would not allow my pen to write you this jeremiad.' As De
Maistre was accustomed to think himself happy if he got three hours'
sound sleep in the night, these sombre and terrible vigils were ample
enough to excuse him if he had allowed them to overshadow all other
things. But the vigour of his intellect was too strenuous, and his
curiosity and interest in every object of knowledge too
inextinguishable. 'After all,' he said, 'the only thing to do is to put
on a good face, and to march to the place of torture with a few friends
to console you on the way. This is the charming image under which I
picture my present situation. Mark you,' he added, 'I always count books
among one's consoling friends.'

In one of the most gay and charming of his letters, apologising to a
lady for the remissness of his correspondence, he explains that
diplomacy and books occupy every moment. 'You will admit, madam, there
is no possibility of one's shutting up books entirely. Nay, more than
ever, I feel myself burning with the feverish thirst for knowledge. I
have had an access of it which I cannot describe to you. The most
curious books literally run after me, and hurry voluntarily to place
themselves in my hands. As soon as diplomacy gives me a moment of
breathing-time I rush headlong to that favourite pasture, to that
ambrosia of