may appear at first sight. Is it not the case that some minds regard everything as trivial, whilst others (and I am much inclined to think that these latter, without wishing to speak evil of the former class of people, are the true thinkers and the true philosophers), who try to follow the thread Providence holds in His hands, with which He guides men from birth to death, from the unknown to the unknown, look upon every detail as of importance, because the slightest has its part in the great mass of details which we call life? Well, I was well scolded by my mother, who did not scold me long, I however, for I kissed her the whole time she scolded me; besides, her uneasiness was somewhat allayed, and with the eye of a mother and perhaps even more with the insight of a woman, which sees to the very heart of things, she saw I was profoundly happy. Joy is as much a mystery as sorrow; excessive joy approaches so nearly the border of pain, that, like suffering, it too has its measure of tears. My mother left me to go to bed, not because she was tired out, poor mother! but because she felt I wanted to be alone with myself, with my recent memories, which I clasped as closely to my throbbing heart as one holds to one's breast a young nestling which is trying to fly away. Oh! but Maître Mennesson's office was deserted that day! How beautiful the park looked to me! The tall trees with their whispering leaves, the birds singing above my head, and the frightened roebuck on the skyline--all seemed to make a frame which could scarce contain my smiling thoughts, my thoughts which danced like a joyous nymph! Love--first love--the welling-up of the sap, opens out life to us! It flows through the most secret recesses of our being; it gives life to the most remote of our senses; it is a vast realm wherein every man imprisoned in this world imprisons in turn the whole world in himself. CHAPTER II Return of Adolphe de Leuven--He shows me a corner of the artistic and literary world--The death of Holbein and the death of Orcagna--Entrance into the green-rooms--Bürger's _Lénore_--First thoughts of my vocation In the meantime, de Leuven returned to Villers-Cotterets, after five or six months' absence. His return was to open out new fields for my ambitions--ambitions, however, which I believed were capable of being fulfilled. If you throw a stone into a lake, however large the lake may be, the first circle it will make round it, after its fall, will go on growing and multiplying itself, even as do our days and our desires, until the last one touches the bank--that is to say, eternity.