In contrasting this parish priest with the chaplain of Inismore, I could not help exclaiming with Epaminondas--“It is the _man_ who must give dignity to the situation--not the situation to the man.” Adieu.
“La solitude est certainement une belle chose, mais il-y-a plaisir d’avoir quelqu’une qui en sache repondre, a qui on puis dire, la solitude est une belle chose.”
So says Monsieur de Balsac, and so repeats my heart a thousand times a day. In short, I am devoured by _ennui_, by apathy, by discontent! What should I do here? Nothing. I have spent but four days here, and all the symptoms of my old disease begin to re-appear: in short, like other impatient invalids, I believed my cure was effected when my disease was only on the decline.
I must again fly to sip from the fountain of intellectual health at Inismore, and receive the vivifying drops from the hand of the presiding priestess, or stay here, and fall into an incurable atrophy of the heart and mind!
Having packed up a part of my wardrobe, and a few books, I sent them by a young rustic to the little _Villa di Marino_, and in about an hour after I followed myself. The old fisherman and his dame seemed absolutely rejoiced to see me, and having laid my valise in their cabin, and dismissed my attendant, I requested they would permit their son to carry my luggage as far as the next _cabaret_, where I expected a man and horse to meet me. They cheerfully complied, and I proceeded with my _compagnon de voyage_ to a hut which lies half way between the fisherman’s and the castle. This hut they call a _Sheebin House_, and is something inferior to a certain description of Spanish inn.
Although a little board informs the weary traveller he is only to expect “good dry lodgings,” yet the landlord contrives to let you know in an _entre nous_ manner, that he keeps some real _Inishone_, (or spirits, smuggled from a tract of country so called) for his particular friends. So having dismissed my second courier, and paid for the whiskey I did not taste, and the potatoes I did not eat, I sent my host forward, mounted on a sorry mule, with my travelling equipage, to the cabin at the foot of the drawbridge; and by these precautions obviated all possibility of discovery.