“You were wont to look for this compensation in your own heart.” “But if I no longer find it there? Oh, how came we to fall on this subject? Why did you revive these recollections in me? I had recourse to this tumult of the senses in order to stifle an inward voice which embitters my whole life; in order to lull to rest this inquisitive reason, which, like a sharp sickle, moves to and fro in my brain, at each new research lopping off another branch of my happiness.” “My dearest prince”--He had risen, and was pacing up and down the room in unusual agitation. [I have endeavored, dearest O------, to relate to you this remarkable conversation exactly as it occurred; but this I found impossible, although I sat down to write it the evening of the day it took place. In order to assist my memory I was obliged to transpose the observation of the prince, and thus this compound of a conversation and a philosophical lecture, which is in some respects better and in others worse than the source from which I took it, arose; but I assure you that I have rather omitted some of the prince’s words than ascribed to him any of my own; all that is mine is the arrangement, and a few observations, whose ownership you will easily recognize by their stupidity.--Note of the Baron von F------] “When everything gives way before me and behind me; when the past lies in the distance in dreary monotony, like a city of the dead; when the future offers me naught; when I see my whole being enclosed within the narrow circle of the present, who can blame me if I clasp this niggardly present of time in my arms with fiery eagerness, as though it were a friend whom I was embracing for the last time? Oh, I have learnt to value the present moment. The present moment is our mother; let us love it as such.” “Gracious sir, you were wont to believe in a more lasting good.” “Do but make the enchantment last and fervently will I embrace it. But what pleasure can it give to me to render beings happy who to-morrow will have passed away like myself? Is not everything passing away around me? Each one bustles and pushes his neighbor aside hastily to catch a few drops from the fountain of life, and then departs thirsting. At this very moment, while I am rejoicing in lily strength, some being is waiting to start into life at my dissolution. Show me one being who will endure, and I will become a virtuous man.” “But what, then, has become of those benevolent sentiments which used to be the joy and the rule of your life? To sow seeds for the future, to assist in carrying out the designs of a high and eternal Providence”-- “Future! Eternal Providence! If you take away from man all that he derives from his own heart, all that he associates with the idea of a godhead, and all that belongs to the law of nature, what, then, do you leave him?