The perfume of a beautiful flower is not imaginary, the splendours of a magnificent landscape are real, beautiful forms are not deceptive. What interested motive could I impute to the flower that perfumes the air, the bird that sings, the wind murmuring softly through the leaves, the sea breaking on the beach, to nature, that unfolds so many treasures, colours, melodies, and fragrances? It is true I will be all alone to enjoy these marvels, but solitude pleases me. I possess a deep sense of material beauty, which will be sufficient to make up for my want of faith in moral beauty. The sight of luxuriant nature, of a fine horse or dog, a flower or a beautiful woman, or even a lovely sunset, has always given me exquisite pleasure, and though religious faith is unfortunately lacking in me, when I behold the splendours of creation I always feel transports of heartfelt gratitude towards the unknown power that heaps such treasures on us. Regretting the faculties of which I am deprived, I will at least make the most of those I possess; and since I can not be happy through the mind, let me be so through the senses. This I said to myself, and I was not mistaken, for never have I enjoyed such perfect happiness. Falmouth was the best, the noblest of men. I know it. But when I compare my present life of felicity with the life of study and politics that Henry depicted in such glowing colours, the only thing I regret is the friendship that I destroyed by my awful suspicions. Henry was quite right when he said that idleness was the source of all my miseries; so I have spent my time in the making of living pictures on which I can at all times gaze. It has taken much toil, and even study, to surround myself with all these marvels of creation, to get together all the scattered riches of this Garden of Eden. Sages may tell us that these are but childish pleasures, but it is their simplicity that constitutes their pleasantness. Serious immaterial joys are but perishable, while the thousand little pleasures a youthful nature can always discover in his reveries, though trifling and momentary, are constantly being renewed, for the imagination that produces them is inexhaustible. Now that I have lived in such adorable independence, the life of society, with its exigencies, appears to me as a sort of order whose rules are as strict as those of the "Trappists." I do not know which I would prefer, to be comfortably clothed in a serge gown, or cramped up in a tight coat; to breathe the pure fresh air of the garden I cultivated or the stifling atmosphere of a crowded salon; to kneel through the service of matins, or to stand all evening at some reception. In fact, I think I should as willingly choose the meditative silence of the cloister as the chatter of the salon; and say with about as much interest, "Brother, we must die," of the religious order, as "Brother, we must amuse ourselves," of the social order.