When I left Ostend on a mild February morning, and found myself on the road to Brussels, nothing could look vapid to me.

My sense of enjoyment possessed an edge whetted to the finest, untouched, keen, exquisite.
I was young; I had good health; pleasure and I had never met; no indulgence of hers had enervated or sated one faculty of my nature.
Liberty I clasped in my arms for the first time, and the influence of her smile and embrace revived my life like the sun and the west wind.
Yes, at that epoch I felt like a morning traveller who doubts not that from the hill he is ascending he shall behold a glorious sunrise; what if the track be strait, steep, and stony?
he sees it not; his eyes are fixed on that summit, flushed already, flushed and gilded, and having gained it he is certain of the scene beyond.

He knows that the sun will face him, that his chariot is even now coming over the eastern horizon, and that the herald breeze he feels on his cheek is opening for the god's career a clear, vast path of azure, amidst clouds soft as pearl and warm as flame.

Difficulty and toil were to be my lot, but sustained by energy, drawn on by hopes as bright as vague, I deemed such a lot no hardship.

I mounted now the hill in shade; there were pebbles, inequalities, briars in my path, but my eyes were fixed on the crimson peak above; my imagination was with the refulgent firmament beyond, and I thought nothing of the stones turning under my feet, or of the thorns scratching my face and hands.
I gazed often, and always with delight, from the window of the diligence (these, be it remembered, were not the days of trains and railroads).
Well! and what did I see?
I will tell you faithfully.