A Night Journey Round my Room

For a long time I had desired to revisit the country in which I had made such enjoyable excursions; moreover, I did not feel at all satisfied with my own description of it. Some friends, who had dipped into my former journey, had begged me to continue it, and, without doubt, I should have decided to do so sooner, if I had not been separated from my travelling companions. It was with sadness that I resumed my undertaking. Alas! I resumed it alone! I was about to travel without my dear Joanetti and my charming Rose.13 My first room itself showed signs of a most disastrous change. Nay! It no longer existed. Its site was then part of a horrible ruin blackened by flames, and all the murderous inventions of war had combined to destroy it utterly. The wall on which the portrait of Mme. Hautcastle used to hang, had been pierced by a shell. Indeed, if, happily, I had not made my journey before that catastrophe, the literary world would never have known of that wonderful room. In like manner, but for the observations of Hipparcus, they would today be ignorant of the former existence of one more star among the Plëiades, which has disappeared since the time of that gifted astronomer.

However, compelled by circumstances, I had, some time before, abandoned my room and carried my Penates elsewhere. "No great loss after all," you will say; "but how will you replace Joanetti and Rose? " Ah! that is impossible, Joanetti had become so indispensible to me that I can never replace him. Besides, who can flatter himself that he will always live with those he loves. Just like those gnats we see dancing in the air during the beautiful summer evenings, men meet quite by chance, and but for a brief space of time. They must count themselves fortunate if, in the rapidity of their movements, in which they seem to rival the gnats themselves, they do not break each others heads.