Page:Teleny, or The Reverse of the Medal, t. II.djvu/74

 fallen considerably, was crisp, light, and balmy; the sun—a round, furbished, copper disc, and more like a red Indian's backside than fair Apollo's effulgent face—was shining gloriously for me; the murky fog itself, that brought on dark night at three o'clock in the afternoon, was only a hazy mist that veiled all that was ungainly, and rendered Nature fantastic, and home so snug and cosy. Such is the power of imagination.

"You laugh! Alas! Don Quixote was not the only man who took windmills for giants, or barmaids for princesses. If your sluggish-brained, thick-pated costermonger never falls into such a trance as to mistake apples for potatoes; if your grocer never turns hell into heaven, or heaven into hell—well, they are sane people who weigh everything in the well-poised scale of reason. Try and shut them up in nutshells, and you will see if they would deem themselves monarchs of the world. They, unlike Hamlet, always see things as they really are. I never did. But then, you know, my father died mad.

"Anyhow, that overpowering weariness, that loathsomeness of life, had now quite passed away.