In the Shadow of the Guillotine by Rafael Sabatini

THE Chevalier de Seyrac had spent the day pleasantly in Angèle's company.

It is the pessimist Schopenhauer who assures us that only pain is positive; that pleasure is an entirely negative condition consequent upon the absence of physical or mental affliction; that well-being is merely the absence of bodily ailments, and that happiness is no more that the freedom from mental distress. Whether there may be exceptions which the pessimist overlooked in his philosophy, Seyrac's case would come well within the rule, for never was there a happiness at once more complete and more negative.