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

THE PHILOSOPHY OF ADIEUS.203

that which we abandon; but there is another reason which I scarcely venture here to dwell upon.

In certain minds the necessity for independence becomes a passion. The fear of forming ties operates in such manner that we attach ourselves only to things from which we flee, because the attraction that we feel towards such objects binds us to nothing. We experience raptures without any further results. We depart: to depart is to perform an act of liberty. By absence we disengage ourselves from the fetters of sentiment; man enjoys in full security the pleasure of admiring that which he will never see more; he abandons himself to his preferences or his affections without fear or constraint: he knows that he has wings ! But when he feels that through constantly expanding and folding them, they are beginning to wear out, when he discovers that travelling instructs him less than it fatigues him, then is the hour for return and repose arrived : I can perceive that this hour is approaching for me.

It was night. Obscurity, like absence, has its illusion ; like it, it forces us to conjecture. Towards the end of the clay the mind abandons itself to reverie, the heart opens to sensibility and to regret. When all that we see disappears, there remains for us only what we feel: the present dies, the past revives ; death and earth restore their prey, and night. rich in shade, drops over the varied objects an atmospheric veil which magnifies them and makes them appear more tenderly beautiful; obscurity, like absence, enthrals the mind by means of incertitude; it summons the vagueness of poetry in aid of its en-<. hantments : night," absence, and death are magicians, к G