plays a bold game who risks his good sense upon his cards, in
return for the very trifling and insignificant merit of having
divined a young man's future.

"When I say that I expect you in Paris, I use only a proverbial
phrase which you must not allow to mislead you as to my projects
and plans. To reside in Paris is disagreeable to me, very much
so; and when this fine-art fever which possesses me has left me,
I shall abandon the place without regret to seek a more peaceful
residence in a provincial town, provided always the town shall
afford me the means of living, bread, a bed, books, rest,
and solitude. How I miss, my good Proudhon, that dark, obscure,
smoky chamber in which I dwelt in Besancon, and where we spent so
many pleasant hours in the discussion of philosophy! Do you
remember it? But that is now far away. Will that happy time
ever return? Shall we one day meet again? Here my life is
restless, uncertain, precarious, and, what is worse, indolent,
illiterate, and vagrant. I do no work, I live in idleness, I
ramble about; I do not read, I no longer study; my books are
forsaken; now and then I glance over a few metaphysical works,
and after a days walk through dirty, filthy, crowded streets. I
lie down with empty head and tired body, to repeat the
performance on the following day. What is the object of these
walks, you will ask. I make visits, my friend; I hold interviews
with stupid people. Then a fit of curiosity seizes me, the least
inquisitive of beings: there are museums, libraries, assemblies,
churches, palaces, gardens, and theatres to visit. I am fond of
pictures, fond of music, fond of sculpture; all these are
beautiful and good, but they cannot appease hunger, nor take the
place of my pleasant readings of Bailly, Hume, and Tennemann,