ries are still deep in sleep, silence, and shadow, while
here labor, light, and song already reign.

What life is around me! See the swallow returning from her search for
food, with her beak full of insects for her young ones; the sparrows
shake the dew from their wings while they chase one another in the
sunshine; and my neighbors throw open their windows, and welcome the
morning with their fresh faces! Delightful hour of waking, when
everything returns to feeling and to motion; when the first light of day
strikes upon creation, and brings it to life again, as the magic wand
struck the palace of the Sleeping Beauty in the wood! It is a moment of
rest from every misery; the sufferings of the sick are allayed, and a
breath of hope enters into the hearts of the despairing. But, alas! it is
but a short respite! Everything will soon resume its wonted course: the
great human machine, with its long strains, its deep gasps, its
collisions, and its crashes, will be again put in motion.

The tranquillity of this first morning hour reminds me of that of our
first years of life. Then, too, the sun shines brightly, the air is
fragrant, and the illusions of youth-those birds of our life's
morning-sing around us. Why do they fly away when we are older? Where do
this sadness and this solitude, which gradually steal upon us, come from?
The course seems to be the same with individuals and with communities: at
starting, so readily made happy, so easily enchanted; and at the goal,
the bitter disappointment or reality! The road, which began among
hawthorns and primroses, ends speedily in deserts or in precipices! Why
is there so much confidence at first, so much doubt at last? Has, then,
the knowledge of life no other end but to make it unfit for happiness?
Must we condemn ourselves to ignorance if we would preserve hope? Is the
world and is the individual man intended, after all, to find rest only in
an eternal childhood?

How many times have I asked myself these questions! Solitude has the
advantage or the danger of making us continually search more deeply into
the same ideas. As our discourse is only with ourself, we always give the
same direction to the conversation; we are not called to turn it to the
subject which occupies another mind, or interests another's feelings; and
so an involuntary inclination makes us return forever to knock at the
same doors!

I interrupted my reflections to put my attic in order. I hate the look of
di