I was more moved than I can say.
It was like a scene of Dickens, and I felt a rush of sympathy, untouched
either by egotism or by melancholy.
Twenty-five years! It seems to me a dream as far as I am concerned, and
I can scarcely believe my eyes, or this inanimate witness to so many
lustres passed away. How strange a thing _to have lived_, and to feel
myself so far from a past which yet is so present to me! One does not
know whether one is sleeping or waking. Time is but the space between
our memories; as soon as we cease to perceive this space, time has
disappeared. The whole life of an old man may appear to him no longer
than an hour, or less still; and as soon as time is but a moment to us,
we have entered upon eternity. Life is but the dream of a shadow; I felt
it anew this evening with strange intensity.
January 29, 1866. (_Nine o'clock in the morning_).--The gray curtain of
mist has spread itself again over the town; everything is dark and dull.
The bells are ringing in the distance for some festival; with this
exception everything is calm and silent. Except for the crackling of the
fire, no noise disturbs my solitude in this modest home, the shelter of
my thoughts and of my work, where the man of middle age carries on the
life of his student-youth without the zest of youth, and the sedentary
professor repeats day by day the habits which he formed as a traveler.
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