“All I now require is to be left alone to the use of my natural instincts, which have ripened under affliction, and to the enjoyment {316} of the attributes with which nature has endowed me. I have been long in discovering my true self. Now that I have found the rascal, I will keep watch over him, and prove to the world that my wandering life has not been wholly spent in pursuits of vanity. [Illustration] “What more do I require? Does not the naïad of the rock distil from the elements an exhaustless store of water to quench my thirst? {317} The beloved tree of Cybele, does it not shelter my dwelling with its evergreen boughs? Above all, when the day’s toil is ended and I return laden with the trophies of the chase, have I not a devoted partner to welcome me home? “I have now no ambition save one, and that is to make the acquaintance of that heavenly constellation which bears our noble name.” {318} THE SEVENTH HEAVEN. _VOYAGE ABOVE THE CLOUDS._ CHAPTER OF DREAMS. I. [Illustration] I was dead. Dead as one perhaps dies when uncertain whether it is better to live or to die; dead without knowing when or how. I had indeed died painlessly, pleasantly, and mysteriously. So easily had my life left my body, so little had it suffered in quitting the form of clay, that at first my body did not perceive the change. Of the precise moment when from a living Turtle-dove I became a corpse, I remember nothing, unless it be that before death the moon shone brightly in a cloudless sky; and when my astonished spirit made out that it had fulfilled its duty on earth, the moon had not ceased to shine, and the sky was still cloudless. Probably my death, far from quenching the light of the moon, or sending the sky into mourning, had made no visible change in earth or heaven. What can it matter to fruitful nature whether a creature like me lives or dies? Yet after all, we are assured that a Sparrow shall not fall to the ground without its heavenly Father. {319} II. I have no doubt my spirit rejoiced at finding itself free, since it could have no real love for a body so impotent to respond to its lofty aspirations. In truth, many times in the days of their union my poor flesh had been almost left alone to look after itself, while my spirit dreamt at ease of some peculiar mythical world. Is it not possible during dreams that the body is quietly left to slumber while the spirit roams about in ethereal realms of its own? First it carefully lays a telegraphic line from its slumbering solid dwelling on earth, and in an instant traverses space, sending back to the living brain flashes of strange intelligence from other spheres. III.