"Oh! you people of sound understandings," I replied, smiling, "are
ever ready to exclaim 'Extravagance, and madness, and intoxication!'
You moral men are so calm and so subdued! You abhor the drunken
man, and detest the extravagant; you pass by, like the Levite,
and thank God, like the Pharisee, that you are not like one of
them. I have been more than once intoxicated, my passions have
always bordered on extravagance: I am not ashamed to confess it;
for I have learned, by my own experience, that all extraordinary
men, who have accomplished great and astonishing actions, have
ever been decried by the world as drunken or insane. And in
private life, too, is it not intolerable that no one can undertake
the execution of a noble or generous deed, without giving rise to
the exclamation that the doer is intoxicated or mad? Shame upon
you, ye sages!"

"This is another of your extravagant humours," said Albert: "you
always exaggerate a case, and in this matter you are undoubtedly
wrong; for we were speaking of suicide, which you compare with
great actions, when it is impossible to regard it as anything but
a weakness. It is much easier to die than to bear a life of misery
with fortitude."

I was on the point of breaking off the conversation, for nothing
puts me so completely out of patience as the utterance of a wretched
commonplace when I am talking from my inmost heart. However, I
composed myself, for I had often heard the same observation with
sufficient vexation; and I answered him, therefore, with a little
warmth, "You call this a weakness -- beware of being led astray
by appearances. When a nation, which has long groaned under the