In the meantime he had quarrels with the police: his house was watched, he was threatened with assassination, and yet he rode out daily, and went into the neighboring pine-forest to practise pistol-shooting. These are the sentiments of a man standing at the muzzle of a loaded cannon, waiting for it to go off. The emotion is great, nay, heroic, but it is not agreeable; and certainly, even at this season of great emotion, he was unhappy. Nothing is more likely to poison happiness than a combative spirit. He writes: "What is the reason that I have been, all my lifetime, more or less _ennuyé?_... I do not know how to answer this, but presume that it is constitutional,--as well as the waking in low spirits, which I have invariably done for many years. Temperance and exercise, which I have practised at times, and for a long time together vigorously and violently, made little or no difference. Violent passions did: when under their immediate influence--it is odd, but--I was in agitated, but _not_ in depressed spirits.... Wine and spirits make me sullen and savage to ferocity--silent, however, and retiring, and not quarrelsome, if not spoken to. Swimming also raises my spirits; but in general they are low, and get daily lower. That is _hopeless_; for I do not think I am so much _ennuyé_ as I was at nineteen. The proof is, that then I must game, or drink, or be in motion of some kind, or I was miserable."[164] "What I feel most growing upon me are laziness, and a disrelish more powerful than indifference. If I rouse, it is into fury. I presume that I shall end (if not earlier by accident, or some such termination) like Swift, 'dying at top.'[165] Lega (his servant) came in with a letter about a bill unpaid at Venice which I thought paid months ago. I flew into a paroxysm of rage, which almost made me faint. I have always had _une âme_, which not only tormented itself, but everybody else in contact with it, and an _esprit violent_, which has almost left me without any esprit at all."[166]