If I had touched my head instead, I should have been nearer the mark.
Pepper stared at me.
"Earthly happiness," I continued, "is a delusion and a snare.

You will never be happy, Pepper, until you are a cherub." Pepper, by the by, would have made an excellent cherub, he was so chubby.

Having delivered myself of these gloomy remarks, I arose languidly from the grass and moved away, leaving Pepper staring after me in mute astonishment.

I was Hamlet and Werter and the late Lord Byron all in one.
You will ask what my purpose was in cultivating this factitious despondency.

None whatever.