"Alas, my dear swallow, who know my story so well, you are extremely kind; but I am a poor moulting bird, and my feathers will never come back; I cannot, therefore, fly away with you. And you could not carry me: I am too heavy with sorrows and years. And then, where should we go? Spring and beautiful climates are no longer of my season. For you, the air and love; for me, the ground and loneliness. You are going away: may the dew cool your wings! May a hospitable yard offer to your tired flight, when you are crossing the Ionian Sea! May a peaceful October save you from shipwreck! Greet the olive-trees of Athens and the palm-trees of Rosetta for me. If I am no more when the flowers bring you back, I invite you to my funeral banquet: come at sunset to snap up the gnats on the grass of my grave; like you, I love liberty and I have lived on little[24]." 3 _and_ 4 _June_ 1833. I set out myself by land, a few moments after the swallow had set sail. The night was overcast; the moon hovered, weakened and wasted, among the clouds; my eyes, half-asleep, closed as they looked at it; I felt as though I were expiring in the mysterious light which illumines the shadows: "I felt," says Manzoni, "I know not what peaceful depression, the fore-runner of the last rest." I stopped at Wiesenbach: a solitary inn, a narrow, cultivated valley between two wooded hills. A German from Brunswick, a traveller like myself, hearing my name pronounced, came running up to me. He pressed my hand, spoke to me of my works; his wife, he told me, was learning to read French in the _Génie du Christianisme._ He did not cease to express surprise at my "youth:" "But," he added, "that is the fault of my judgment; I ought to think you, from your last works, as young as you look." [Sidenote: My age and appearance.] My life has been mixed up with so many events that, in my readers' heads, I have the ancientness of those events themselves. I often speak of my grey head; this is calculated vanity on my part, so that people may exclaim, when they see me: "Ah, he is not so old!" A man is at ease with white hair: he can boast of it; to glory in having black hair would be in bad taste: a fine matter for triumph, to be as your mother made you! But to be as time, misfortune and wisdom have dressed you, that is fine! My little artifice has succeeded sometimes. Quite recently a priest asked to see me; he stood dumb at the sight of me; at last recovering his speech, he cried: "Ah, monsieur, so you will be able to fight a long time yet for the faith!"