Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

IMAGINARY EVILS.51

I shall die, without comprehending why, under the same circumstances, persons whom I love appear to me in danger, and those who are indifferent to me in safety. I have a visionary heart. The silence of a dear friend, after a letter in which he had promised me another by the next courier, suddenly became to me a certain proof that some great misfortune had happened. "When once this idea had possessed my mind, I became its prey; my solitary carriage peopled itself with phantoms. In this fever of the soul, fears are no sooner conceived than realised. All is possible; therefore the misfortune is undoubted: thus it is that despair reasons. "Who has not felt this torment ? but no one feels it so often, so forcibly, as myself. Alas ! it is the troubles of the mind that make us fear death ; for death only puts au end to those of the body. All this is a dream, yet dreams are warnings: they are more to me than realities, for there is a closer affinity between the phantoms of the imao`ination and the mind that produces them, than between that mind and the external world.

This morning the fresh air of the fields, the beauty of the heavens, the smooth and tranquil aspect of the landscape on the sweet shores which border the Baltic at Travennmde, have quieted these secret forebodings, and dissipated, as if by enchantment, the unbroken dream which had tormented me for these three days past. It is not because I have wisely reflected — What can reason do against the influences of a supernatural power? but, fatigued with causeless fear, I have become re-assured also without a cause. This repose, therefore, cannot be security. An evil, apprehended without cause, and dissipated without rca-