The constraint that I was enduring was so alien to my habits and so
beyond my strength that I came nigh to fainting. To obtain relief I went
and threw myself on the grass in the park. This was a refuge to me in
all my troubles. These mighty oaks, this moss which had clung to their
branches through the centuries, these pale, sweet-scented wild flowers,
emblems of secret sorrow, these were the friends of my childhood, and
these alone I had found the same in social as in savage life. I buried
my face in my hands; and I never remember having suffered more in any of
the calamities of my life, though some that I had to bear afterward
were very real. On the whole I ought to have accounted myself lucky, on
giving up the rough and perilous trade of a cut-throat, to find so many
unexpected blessings--affection, devotion, riches, liberty, education,
good precepts and good examples. But it is certain that, in order to
pass from a given state to its opposite, though it be from evil to
good, from grief to joy, from fatigue to repose, the soul of a man must
suffer; in this hour of birth of a new destiny all the springs of his
being are strained almost to breaking--even as at the approach of summer
the sky is covered with dark clouds, and the earth, all a-tremble, seems
about to be annihilated by the tempest.
At this moment my only thought was to devise some means of appeasing my
hatred of M.
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