Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/20

 Valley, perhaps with Utopia. The reader must have known this valley in his geographical lessons, or in the works of Arthur Young, who praises it even more than I do.

I must take for granted, that in July, 1796, the Goddess of Fortune descended from her throne to our earth, and placed in my hand—not mammon, nor garters, nor golden sheep—nothing but her own, and led me—by this I recognized the goddess—to the Campan vale. Truly, man needs but look into it, and he will have—as I had—more than the Devil offered to Christ and Louis XIV., and gave to the popes.

The test of enjoyment is memory. Only the paradises of the imagination willingly remain, and are never lost, but always conquered. Poetry alone reconciles the past to the future, and is the Orpheus's lyre which commands these two destroying rocks to rest.

As stated, in the year 1796, I made a trip through France, with my friend H. Karlson. He is honorary master of horse in the * * * service. The wise public cares little for true names, it always treats them as fictitious ones, by way of literary taxation; and the existing characters, at least those of any importance, may prefer not to be torn over the wheel of criticism, and dragged piece-meal through libraries and reading-clubs. At almost every milestone, I despatched the best hourly bulletin to my friend Victor: when I had sent him the following valley-piece, he persecuted me until I promised to grant