passes at length through plains and
through cities, whence it receives only poisonous water. For an
instant the river is troubled; and we fear lest it lose, and never
recover again, the image of the pure blue sky that the crystal
fountains had lent: the image that seemed its soul, and the deep and
the limpid expression of its great strength. But if we rejoin it, down
yonder, beneath those great trees, we shall find that it has already
forgotten the foulness of the gutters. It has caught the azure again
in its transparent waves; and flows on to the sea, as clear as it was
on the days when it first smilingly leapt from its source on the
mountains.

And so, as regards this friend of mine, although forced more than once
to shed tears, they were at least not of the kind that memory never
forgets, not of those that fall from our eyes as we mourn our own
death. Every failure, the inevitable disappointment once over, served
only in effect to knit him the closer to his secret happiness, to
affirm this within him, and draw a more sombre outline around it, that
it might thereby appear the more precious, and ardent, and certain.
But no sooner had he quitted this charmed enclosure than hostile
incidents vied with each other in their attacks upon him. As for
instance--he was a very good fencer: he had three duels, and was
wounded each time by a less skilful adversary. If he went on board
ship, the voyage would rarely be prosperous. Whatever undertaking he
put money into was sure to turn out badly. A judicial error, into
which a whole series of curiously malevolent circumstances dragged him,
was productive of long and serious trouble. Further, although his face
was agreeable, and the expression of his eyes loyal and frank, he was
not what one calls "sympathetic": he did not arouse at first sight that
spontaneous affection which we often give, without knowing why, to the
unknown who passes, to an enemy even. Nor was he more fortunate in his
affections. Of a loving disposition, and infinitely worthier of being
loved than most of those to whom he was sacrificed by the
chance-governed heart of women--here again he met with nothing but
treachery, deceit and sorrow. He went his way, extricating himself as
best he could from the paltry snares that malicious fortune prepared at
every step; nor was he discouraged or deeply saddened, only somewhat
surprised at so strange a persistence; until at last there came the
great and solitar