though I try still to attribute to a mere effect of light the doubtful
shades that dot my beard under the rays of the noon-day sun. Nevertheless,
if my reverie has changed its object, it still lasts, and still has its
charms for me. My poetic feeling has become modified and, I think, more
elevated. The image of a woman is no longer the indispensable element of
my dreams; my heart, peaceful now, and striving to become still more so,
is gradually withdrawing from the field of my mind's labors. I cannot, I
confess, find enough pleasure in the pure and dry meditations of the
intellect; my imagination must speak first and set my brain in motion, for
I was born romantic, and romantic I shall die; and all that can be asked
of me, all I can obtain of myself, at an age when propriety already
commands gravity, is to build romances without love.

Up to this time, ennui has spared me in my solitude. Shall I confess to
you that I even experience in it a singular feeling of contentment? It
seems as though I were a thousand leagues away from the things of the
world, and that there is a sort of truce and respite in the miserable
routine of my existence, at once so agitated and so commonplace. I relish
my complete independence with the naïve joy of a twelve-year-old Robinson
Crusoe. I sketch when I feel like it; the rest of the time, I walk here
and there at random, being careful only never to go beyond the bounds of
the sacred valley. I sit down upon the parapet of the bridge, and I watch
the running water; I go on voyages of discovery among the ruins; I dive
into the underground vaults; I scale the shattered steps of the belfry,
and being unable to come down again the same way, I remain astride a
gargoyle, cutting a rather sorry figure, until the miller brings me a
ladder. I wander at night through the forest, and I see deer running by in
the moonlight. All these things have a soothing effect on my mind, and
produce the effect of child's dream in middle age.