Ludwig Tieck

“ Oh, my lost youth! sobbed Edward; oh, ye golden days, ye weeks, and years! how sinfully have I squandered you away, as though there lay not in your hours the germ of virtue, of honour, and of happiness; as though this precious treasure of time were ever to be redeemed. Like a glass of stale water have I poured forth my life and the essence of my heart. Oh! what a state of being might have opened on me, what happiness for myself and others, had not an evil genius blinded my eyes! ”

“ Nonsense! said the painter, shaking his grey head; for all good things a man must allow himself time, must make preparation, take his vantage run, close the old period with a solemn rite, and in like manner begin the new one. It was an admirable custom of our ancestors, in some districts, to celebrate the exequies of the carnival with a fit of pure genuine extravagance, to let their spirits once more run wild at the end of the holidays, and surfeit themselves with mirth, that they might afterwards indulge their devotion uninterruptedly, and without the slightest scruple of conscience. ”

“ Verily few men are so inclined to virtue as myself, for it requires a keen eye to know even what virtue is. To act the niggard, and force people to lie in the face of God and man, is certainly none. But whoever has the true talent that way is sure to find it. ”