blessing on life, it shall not be long ere you will call blessing on
yours. Smiles are as catching as tears; and periods men have termed
happy, were periods when there existed some who knew of their
happiness. Happiness rarely is absent; it is we that know not of its
presence. The greatest felicity avails us nothing if we know not
that we are happy; there is more joy in the smallest delight whereof
we are conscious, than in the approach of the mightiest happiness
that enters not into our soul. There are only too many who think
that what they have cannot be happiness; and therefore is it the
duty of such as are happy, to prove to the others that they only
possess what each man possesses deep down in the depths of his
heart. To be happy is only to have freed one's soul from the unrest
of happiness. It were well if, from time to time, there should come
to us one to whom fortune had granted a dazzling, superhuman
felicity, that all men regarded with envy; and if he were very
simply to say to us, "All is mine that you pray for each day: I have
riches, and youth, and health; I have glory, and power, and love;
and if to-day I am truly able to call myself happy, it is not on
account of the gifts that fortune has deigned to accord me, but
because I have learned from these gifts to fix my eyes far above
happiness. If my marvellous travels and victories, my strength and
my love, have brought me the peace and the gladness I sought, it is
only because they have taught me that it is not in them that the
veritable gladness and peace can be found. It was in myself they
existed, before all these triumphs; and still in myself are they
now, after all my achievement; and I know full well that had but a
little more wisdom been mine, I might have enjoyed all I now enjoy
without the aid of so much good fortune. I know that today I am
happier still than I was yesterday, because I have learned at last
that I stand in no need of good fortune in order to free my soul, to