Sorrowfully do I look upon the present generation! Its future seems
either gloomy or meaningless, and meanwhile, whether under the burden
of knowledge or of doubt, it grows old in idleness.
When scarcely out of the cradle, we reap the rich inheritance of the
errors of our fathers, and the results of their tardy thoughts. Life
soon grows wearisome for us, like a banquet at a stranger's festival,
like a level road leading nowhere.
In the commencement of our career, we fall away without a struggle,
shamefully careless about right and wrong, shamefully timid in the
face of danger.
So does a withered fruit which has prematurely ripened--attractive
neither to the eye nor to the palate--hang like an alien orphan among
blossoms; and the hour of their beauty is that of its fall.
Our intellect has dried up in the pursuit of fruitless science, while
we have been concealing the purest of hopes from the knowledge of
those who are near and dear to us, and stifling the noble utterance of
such sentiments as are ridiculed by a mocking spirit.
We have scarcely tasted of the cup of enjoyment, but for all that we
have not husbanded our youthful strength. While we were always in
dread of satiety, we have contrived to drain each joy of its best
virtues.
No dreams of poetry, no creations of art, touch our hearts with a
sweet rapture. We stingily hoard up within our breasts the last
remnants of feeling--a treasure concealed by avarice, and which
remains utterly unprofitable.
We love and we hate capriciously, sacrificing nothing either to our
animosity or to our affection, a certain secret coldness possessing
our souls, even while a fire is raging in our veins.
The sumptuous pleasures of our ancestors weary us, as well as their
simple, childish diversions. Without enjoying happiness, without
reaping glory, we hasten onwards to the grave, casting naught but
unlucky glances behind us.
A saturnine crowd, soon to be forgotten, we silently pass away from
the world and leave no trace behind, without having handed down to the
ages to come a single work of genius, or even a solitary thought laden
with meaning.
And our descendants, regarding our memory with the severity of
citizens called to sit in judgment on an affair concerning the state,
will allude to us with the scathing irony of a ruined son, when he
speaks of the father who has squandered away his patrimony.