‘I have also passed through that delicious period of life when youth gets intoxicated with all kinds of flattering promises, which a riper age rarely keeps, and which old age altogether disperses. At that period, days fly like moments, and the moments are worth centuries. Happy he who knows how to profit by them! Life is a limpid cup which becomes troubled while one drinks from it; the first drops are like ambrosia; but the lees are at the bottom; the more agitated one’s life is, the more bitter does the draught become at last. The loss, when all is said and done, is perhaps not so great. Man gets to his grave as the absent-minded get to their house. Here’s the door of mine. Good-night, my dear lad. You, who are beginning your career, take care to employ every minute to the greatest advantage, and don’t forget that the saddest days of our lives are counted in the tale of our years just as much as the happiest. Delille was right when he said, “Our best days go first.”’ And I took my leave of this excellent prince, of this extraordinary man, whose only weakness consisted in not making his pleasures fit in with his age, and in persisting in keeping up a struggle with time, that invincible athlete whom, as yet, no one has conquered. Alas, he believed in the fable of Anacreon, whose love-affairs still provided wreaths of roses for his hoary locks at eighty. This love-tryst of the Prince de Ligne was to be his last. When he talked thus of man’s arriving at the brink of the grave without thinking of it, he was far from perceiving that he himself already had one foot therein. Since then I have often reflected on the melancholy sadness of all his words, but the Prince de Ligne never seriously considered the idea of death. Not that he was afraid of it. At no time of his life did fear approach within an arm’s length of him. If now and again he spoke of old age with a kind of melancholy, it was because he dreaded the idea of not being in unison with the new generations around him, as he had been in unison with the friends of his youth. Thinking of all this, I continued my nocturnal stroll by myself, repeating the verses the prince had improvised on the subject, and I reached the hotel, the ‘Roman Emperor,’ just as the Comte Z---- was going in. To dispel the sad thoughts induced by the prince’s remarks, I accepted Count Z----‘s offer of a glass of punch and accompanied him to his apartments.