I have written them?  I may answer.  Why deprive myself of the actual charm of my enjoyments to inform others what I enjoyed?  What to me were readers, the public, or all the world, while I was mounting the empyrean.  Besides, did I carry pens, paper and ink with me?  Had I recollected all these, not a thought would have occurred worth preserving.  I do not foresee when I shall have ideas; they come when they please, and not when I call for them; either they avoid me altogether, or rushing in crowds, overwhelm me with their force and number.  Ten volumes a day would not suffice barely to enumerate my thoughts; how then should I find time to write them?  In stopping, I thought of nothing but a hearty dinner; on departing, of nothing but a charming walk; I felt that a new paradise awaited me at the door, and eagerly leaped forward to enjoy it.

Never did I experience this so feelingly as in the perambulation I am now describing.  On coming to Paris, I had confined myself to ideas which related to the situation I expected to occupy there.  I had rushed into the career I was about to run, and should have completed it with tolerable eclat, but it was not that my heart adhered to.  Some real beings obscured my imagined ones—­Colonel Godard and his nephew could not keep pace with a hero of my disposition.  Thank Heaven, I was soon delivered from all these obstacles, and could enter at pleasure into the wilderness of chimeras, for that alone remained before me, and I wandered in it so completely that I several times lost my way; but this was no misfortune, I would not have shortened it, for, feeling with regret, as I approached Lyons, that I must again return to the material world, I should have been glad never to have arrived there.

One day, among others, having purposely gone out of my way to take a nearer view of a spot that appeared delightful, I was so charmed with it, and wandered round it so often, that at length I completely lost myself, and after several hours’ useless walking, weary, fainting with hunger and thirst, I entered a peasant’s hut, which had not indeed a very promising appearance, but was the only one I could discover near me.  I thought it was here, as at Geneva, or in Switzerland, where the inhabitants, living at ease, have it in their power to exercise hospitality.  I entreated the countryman to give me some dinner, offering to pay for it:  on which he presented me with some skimmed milk and coarse barley—­bread, saying it was all he had.  I drank the milk with pleasure, and ate the bread, chaff and all; but it was not very restorative to a man sinking with fatigue.  The countryman, who watched me narrowly, judged the truth of my story by my appetite, and presently (after having said that he plainly saw I was an honest, good—­natured young man, and did not come to betray him) opened a little trap door by the side of his kitchen, went down, and returned a moment after with a good brown loaf of pure wheat, the remains of a well-flavored ham, and a bottle of wine, the sight of which rejoiced my heart more than all the rest:  he then prepared a good thick omelet, and I made such a dinner as none but a walking traveller ever enjoyed.