Far from the maddening girls!
Six weeks have passed since, with easy complacency, I closed the foregoing pages with those words, and to-day, for all the pride I have in them, they might be only hideous changelings in the cradle of my manuscript. But let them lie. Poor things, it is all they can do now!
In what manner the scales fell from my eyes I cannot pretend to say. It was a miracle like a bird’s first flight, sunrise, or the opening of a rose. The soul of me drew away, and stared with amazed contempt at the little shell of sophistry in which it had been imprisoned. The flimsy edifice of bachelor philosophy came toppling down like any house of cards: and all I have here written of “Sans Souci” turned in a moment to the veriest trash. It was the work of a night; of the night, indeed, which followed the day on which I closed these notes.
But from the day, almost from the hour,
