University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I: IN WHICH I DECIDE TO BE YOUNG AGAIN

YES, I said to myself, the lad is quite right; I will follow his advice. I+'m afraid I was in danger of developing into a sad cynic, with a taste for the humour of this world. What should have been a lofty high-souled pilgrimage, only less transcendental than that of the Holy Grail itself, has so far failed, no doubt, because I have undertaken it too much in the wanton spirit of a troubadour.

I will grow young and serious again. Yes, why not? I will take a vow of Youth. One's age is entirely a matter of the imagination. From this moment I am no longer thirty. Thirty falls from me like a hideous dream. My back straightens again at the

thought; my silvering hair blackens once more; my eyes, a few moments ago lacklustre and sunken, grow bright and full again, and the whites are clear as the finest porcelain. Veni, veni, Mephistophile! your Faust is young again, — young, young, and, with a boy's heart, open once more to all the influences of the mighty world.

I bring down my stick upon the ground with a mighty ring of resolution, and the miracle is done. Who would take me for thirty now? From this moment I abjure pessimism and cynicism in all their forms, put from my mind all considerations of the complexities of human life, unravel all by a triumphant optimism which no statistics can abash or criticism dishearten. I likewise undertake to divest myself entirely of any sense of humour that may have developed within me during the baneful experiences of the last ten years, and, in short, will consent for the future to be nothing that is not perfectly perfect and pure. These, I take it, are the fundamental conditions of being young again.

And as for the Quest, it shall forthwith

be undertaken in an entirely serious and high-minded spirit. From this moment I am on the look-out for a really transcendental attachment. No "bright-eyed bar-maids,'' however "refined,'' need apply. Ladies who are prodigal of their white petticoats are no longer fit company for me. Indeed I shall no longer look upon a petticoat, unless I am able first entirely to spiritualise it. It must first be disinfected of every earthly thought.

Yes, I am once more a young man, sound in wind and limb, with not a tooth or an illusion lost, my mind tabula rasa, my heart to be had for the asking. Oh, come, ye merry, merry maidens! The fairy prince is on the fairy road.

Incipit vita nuova!

So in the lovely rapture of a new-born resolution — and is there any rapture like it? — nature has no more intoxicating illusion than that of turning over a new leaf, or beginning a new life from to-day — I sprang along the road with a carolling heart; quite forgetting that Apuleius and Fielding and Boccaccio were still in my knapsack — not to speak of the petticoat.