outside of them? No, no, I have nothing to complain of in this world, and I mean to stay here as long as I possibly can. Suppose that I had never been born? I really cannot bear to think of a world without Breugnon, or what is perhaps even worse, Breugnon without the world! A plague on all such nonsense! things are well enough as they are, and you may be sure that I shall hold tight to all that belongs to me.
When I got back to Clamecy, I was a whole day behind time, and you may guess what sort of a welcome I had, and also how little I minded. I just shut myself up in the garret, and put it all down on paper, as you see. There was no one there to listen, so if the fancy took me I could speak out loud, going over in retrospect all that happened, both pleasures and pains, and the pleasure that we get out of pain, for —
"That which breaks the heart to bear,
Is sometimes sweet to tell and hear."
