One day his old instructor began to lament the change which had been lately observed in him, and to inquire why he so often retired from the pleasures of the palace to loneliness and silence.

“I fly from pleasure,” said the prince, “because pleasure has ceased to please.  I am lonely because I am miserable, and am unwilling to cloud with my presence the happiness of others.”

“You, sir,” said the sage, “are the first who has complained of misery in the Happy Valley.  I hope to convince you that your complaints have no real cause.  Look round and tell me which of your wants is without supply.  If you want nothing, how are you unhappy?”

“That I want nothing,” said the prince, “or that I know not what I want, is the cause of my complaint.  If I had only known a want, I should have a certain wish, and that wish would excite endeavour for its satisfaction.  I have already enjoyed too much.  Give me something to desire.”

“Sir,” said the old man, “if you had seen the miseries of the world, you would know how to value your present state.”

“Now,” said the prince, “you have given me something to desire.  I shall long to see the miseries of the world, since the sight of them is necessary to happiness.”

II.—­The Escape Into the Outer World

The stimulus of this new desire—­the desire of seeing the world—­soon had its effect in making Rasselas no longer gloomy and unsociable.  Considering himself as master of a secret stock of happiness, he affected to be busy in all the assemblies and schemes of diversion, because he supposed the frequency of his presence necessary to the success of his purposes.  He retired gladly to privacy, because in picturing to himself that world which he had never seen he had now a subject of thought.

Thus passed twenty months of his life; he busied himself so intensely in visionary bustle that he forgot his real solitude.  But one day the consciousness of his own folly and inaction pierced him deeply.  He compared twenty months with the life of man.  “The period of human existence,” said he, “may be reasonably estimated at forty years, of which I have mused away the four-and-twentieth part.”

These sorrowful meditations fastened upon his mind; he passed four months in resolving to lose no more time in idle resolves.  Then, awakening to more vigorous exertion, he for a few hours regretted his regret, and from that time bent his whole mind upon the means of escaping from the Valley of Happiness.

He now found that it would be very difficult to effect that which it was very easy to suppose effected.  He passed week after week in clambering the mountains, but found all the summits inaccessible by their prominence.  The iron gate was not only secured with all the power of art, but was always watched by successive sentinels.  In these fruitless researches he spent ten months.  The time, however, passed cheerfully away, for he met a thousand amusements which beguiled his labour and diversified his thought.