Putting the best face on things, supposing I might recover my fortune, an event so uncertain that it were best not to count on it, I wisely traced the line of duty with a firm hand and joyous heart. I decided immediately that I would not undeceive my friends as to my departure, and that I would employ, in silence and seclusion, the time I was supposed to be spending abroad. Not that it did not occur to me to proclaim boldly what I had done, for in a country where a dozen wretches are every year publicly beheaded for the sake of example, perhaps it would be well also, for example's sake, to do good publicly. To do this, however, would have been to compromise Frederick's credit, who, besides, would never have accepted my sacrifice if he could have measured its extent. I could have retired to my estates; but felt no inclination to make an exposure of my poverty to the comments of a charitable province; nor had I taste for the life of a ruined country squire. Besides, solitude was essential to my plans, and solitude is impossible out of Paris; one is never really lost save in a crowd. I soon found in the Masario a little room very near the clouds, but brightened by the rising sun, overlooking a sea of verdure marked here and there by a few northern pines, with their gloomy and motionless branches. This nest pleased me. I furnished it simply, filled it with books and hung over my bed the portrait of my sainted mother, who seemed to smile on and encourage me, while you, Frederick and others believed me steaming towards the shores of the East; and here I quietly installed myself, prouder and more triumphant than a soldier of fortune taking possession of a kingdom. Edgar, these two years I really lived--. In that little room I spent what will remain, I very much fear, the purest, the brightest, the best period of my whole life. I am not of much account now, formerly I was nothing; the little good that is in me was developed in those two years of deep vigils. I thought, reflected, suffered and nourished myself with the bread of the strong. I initiated myself into the stern delights of study, the austere joys of poverty. O! days of labor and privation, beautiful days! Where have you gone? Holy enchantments, shall I ever taste you again? Silent and meditative nights! when at the first glimmer of dawn I saw the angel of revery alight at my side, bend his beautiful face over me, and fold my wearied limbs in his white wings; blissful nights! will you ever return? If you only knew the life I led through these two years! If you knew what dreams visited me in that humble nest by the dim light of the lamp, you would be jealous of them, my poet!