measuring the future.  When their will is equal to the breadth of the
angle at which they open it the world is theirs.  But this phenomenon
of the inner life takes place only at a certain age.  That age, which
for all men lies between twenty-two and twenty-eight, is the period of
great thoughts, of fresh conceptions, because it is the age of immense
desires.  After that age, short as the seed-time, comes that of
execution.  There are, as it were, two youths,--the youth of belief,
the youth of action; these are often commingled in men whom Nature has
favored and who, like Caesar, like Newton, like Bonaparte, are the
greatest among great men. 

I was measuring how long a time it might take a thought to develop.
Compass in hand, standing on a rock some hundred fathoms above the
ocean, the waves of which were breaking on the reef below, I surveyed
my future, filling it with books as an engineer or builder traces on
vacant ground a palace or a fort. 

The sea was beautiful; I had just dressed after bathing; and I awaited
Pauline, who was also bathing, in a granite cove floored with fine
sand, the most coquettish bath-room that Nature ever devised for her