Vallombreuse apparently did not perceive it--though in reality he was well aware of it, and of its cause--and was full of fun and frolic.
"Oh! what a delicious thing it is to live," he cried, "yet how seldom we think of the exquisite enjoyment there is in the simple act of breathing," and he drew a long, deep breath, as if he never could get enough of the soft, balmy air.

"The trees surely were never so green before, the sky so blue, or the flowers so fragrant.

I feet as if I had been born into the world only yesterday, and was looking upon nature for the first time to-day.

I never appreciated it before.

When I remember that I might even now be lying, stiff and stark, under a fine marble monument, and that instead of that I am riding through an elysium, beside my darling sister, who has really learned to love me, I am too divinely happy.