on tangible troubles, and to end by appreciating the cares of poverty as
salutary distractions from the sickly anxieties of an unemployed mind.

Oh! believe me to be serious, and accuse me not of comic-opera
philosophy, my dear Valentine! I feel none of that proud disdain for
importunate fortune that we read of in novels; nor do I regret "my
pretty boat," nor "my cottage by the sea;" here, in this beautiful
drawing-room of the Hotel de Langeac, writing to you, I do not sigh for
my gloomy garret in the Marais, where my labors day and night were most
tiresome, because a mere parody of the noblest arts, an undignified
labor making patience and courage ridiculous, a cruel game which we play
for life while cursing it.

No! I regret not this, but I do regret the indolence, the idleness of
mind succeeding such trivial exertions. For then there were no
resolutions to make, no characters to study, and, above all, no
responsibility to bear, nothing to choose, nothing to change.

I had but to follow every morning the path marked out by necessity the
evening before.

If I were able to copy or originate some hundred designs; if I possessed
sufficient carmine or cobalt to color some wretched
engravings--worthless, but fashionable--which I must myself deliver on
the morrow; if I could succeed in finding some new patterns for
embroidery and tapestry, I was content--and for recreation indulged at
evenings in the sweetest, that is most absurd, reveries.

Revery then was a rest to me, now it is a labor, and a dangerous labor
when too often resorted to; good thoughts then came to assist me in my