O happiness! of all earthly chimeras thou art the most chimerical! I would rather seek dry figs on the bottom of the sea and fresh ones on this heath,--I would rather seek liberty, or truth itself, or the philosopher's stone, than to run after thee, most deceitful of lights, will-o'-the-wisp of our human life! I thought that at last I had found a perfectly happy, an enviable man; and now--behold! though I have not the ten-thousandth part of his wealth, though I have not the tenth part of his health, though I may not have a third of his intellect, although I have all the wants which he has not and the one want under which he suffers, yet I would not change places with him! From this moment he was the object of my sincerest pity. But what did this awful curse prove to be? Listen and tremble! "Of what use is it all to me?" he said: "coffee, which I love more than all the wines of this earth and more than all the women of this earth, coffee which I love madly--coffee is forbidden me!" Laugh who lists! Inasmuch as everything in this world, viewed in a certain light, is tragic, it would be excusable to weep: but inasmuch as everything viewed in another light is comic, a little laughter could not be taken amiss; only beware of laughing at the sigh with which my happy man pronounced these words, for it might be that in laughing at him you laugh at yourself, your father, your grandfather, your great-grandfather, your great-great-grandfather, and so on, including your entire family as far back as Adam. If, in laughing at such discontent, you laugh in advance at your son, your son's son's son, and so forth to the last descendant of your entire family, this is a matter which I do not decide. It will depend upon the road humanity chooses to take. If it continues as it is going, some coffee-want or other will forever strew it with thorns. Had he said, "Chocolate is forbidden me," or tea, or English ale, or madeira, or strawberries, you would have found his misery equally absurd. The great Alexander is said to have wept because he found no more worlds to conquer. The man who bemoans the loss of a world and the man who bemoans the loss of coffee are to my mind equally unbalanced and equally in need of forgiveness. The desire for a cup of coffee and the desire for a crown, the hankering after the flavor or even the fragrance of the drink and the hankering after fame, are equally mad and equally--human. If history is to be believed, Adam possessed all the advantages and comforts, all the necessities and luxuries a first man could reasonably demand.... Lord of all living things, and sharing his dominion with his beloved, what did he lack? Among ten thousand pleasures, the fruit of one single tree was forbidden him. Good-by content and peace! Good-by forever all his bliss!