The Quest of Sorrow
I
IT is rather strange, in a man of my temperament, that I did not discover the void in my life until I was eighteen years old. And then I found out that I had missed a beautiful and wonderful experience.
I had never known grief. Sadness had shunned me, pain had left me untouched; I could hardly imagine the sensation of being unhappy. And the desire arose in me to have this experience; without which, it seemed to me, that I was not complete. I wanted to be miserable, despairing: a Pessimist! I craved to feel that gnawing fox, Anxiety, at my heart; I wanted my friends (most of whom had been, at some time or other, more or less heartbroken) to press my hand with sympathetic looks, to avoid the subject of my trouble, from delicacy; or, better still, to have long, hopeless talks with me about it, at midnight. I thirsted for salt tears; I longed to clasp Sorrow in my arms and press her pale lips to mine.
Now this wish was not so easily fulfilled as might be supposed, for I was born with those natural and accidental advantages that militate most against failure and depression. There was myappearance.
