Short Fiction, Xavier de Maistre [books to read in your 20s txt] 📗

to liberty. As if they had ever deprived me of it! As if it were in their power to snatch it from me for a single moment, and to hinder me from traversing, at my own good pleasure, the vast space that ever lies open before me! They have forbidden me to go at large in a city, a mere speck, and have left open to me the whole universe, in which immensity and eternity obey me.

I am now free, then; or rather, I must enter again into bondage. The yoke of office is again to weigh me down, and every step I take must conform with the exigencies of politeness and duty. Fortunate shall I be if some capricious goddess do not again make me forget both, and if I escape from this new and dangerous captivity.

O why did they not allow me to finish my captivity! Was it as a punishment that I was exiled to my chamber, to that delightful country in which abound all the riches and enjoyments of the world? As well might they consign a mouse to a granary.

Still, never did I more clearly perceive that I am double than I do now. Whilst I regret my imaginary joys, I feel myself consoled. I am borne along by an unseen power which tells me I need the pure air, and the light of heaven, and that solitude is like death. Once more I don my customary garb; my door opens; I wander under the spacious porticos of the Strada della Po; a thousand agreeable visions float before my eyes. Yes, there is that mansion, that door, that staircase! I thrill with expectation.

In like manner the act of slicing a lemon gives you a foretaste that makes your mouth water.

Poor animal! Take care!

A Night Journey Round My Room I

In order to invest the room in which I made my Night Journey with some interest, I must acquaint the inquisitive reader how it came into my possession. Being continually interrupted in my work, in the noisy house where I lived, I had intended for some time past to look out for a more solitary retreat, when one day turning over a life of M. de Baffon, I read, that that celebrated man had selected an isolated summerhouse in his garden, which contained no other furniture except an armchair, the bureau on which he wrote, and no other work except the one on which he happened to be then engaged. The trifles about which I busy myself are so far removed from the immortal works of M. de Baffon, that the idea of imitating him, even so far, would certainly never have crossed my mind, if an accident had not compelled me to do so. While dusting the furniture, my servant fancied he saw a good deal of dust on a sketch in pastel which I had just finished, and he cleaned it so effectually that he completely removed all the dust which I had been arranging with so much care. After venting my anger against the fellow during his absence, but saying nothing about it on his return, according to my custom, I at once set out on an expedition and returned home with the key of a little room which I had hired on the fourth floor in the Rue de la Providence. That very day, I moved thither the materials necessary for carrying on my favourite occupation, and thenceforth passed the best part of my time, secure from domestic chatter and picture cleaners. In that retired abode the hours fled like minutes, and more than once, while there, my meditations caused me to forget the dinner hour.

Oh, sweet solitude! How well I know the charms with which you captivate your lovers! Alas for him who cannot be alone for a single day without being bored to death, and who would rather talk with fools, if he must, than hold communion with himself! I must confess that I like the solitude of a large town, but, unless constrained thereto by some serious business, such as a journey round my room, I should prefer to be a hermit in the morning only; in the evening I love to see humanity again. Thus I play off against one another the disadvantages of society and solitude, and the contrast also enhances their comparative delights.

But there is such an uncertainty and fatality about the things of this earth, that the very keenness of the pleasure I found in my new abode ought to have forewarned me that it would be but of short duration. The French Revolution, like a flood, swept over every land, crossed the Alps and precipitated itself upon Italy. The first wave swept me far as Bolognia; I shut up my hermitage, whither I had transported all my effects, till happier times. For some years I had been without a Fatherland; one fine morning I discovered that I was without employment. After an entire year spent in seeing people and things I thoroughly detested, and longing to see those whom I should see no more, I returned to Turin. It was necessary to make up my mind to some course of action. I left the hotel La Bonne Femme, where I had put up, with the intention of restoring the little room to its owner and removing my furniture.

The sensations I experienced on entering my hermitage are difficult to describe: everything was there in the exact order, or rather disorder, in which I had left it⁠—the furniture, piled against the walls, had been sheltered from the dust by the elevation of its resting place, my pens were still in the dried up inkstand, and I found an unfinished letter on the table.

I congratulated myself on being once more among my household goods. Each object recalled some event of my life, and my room was crammed full of souvenirs. Instead of returning to the inn, I determined