Annouchka a Tale — Ivan Turgenev

I was then five-and-twenty,-that was a sufficient indication that I had a past, said he, beginning. My own master for some little time, I resolved to travel,-not to complete my education, as they said at the time, but to see the world. I was young, light-hearted, in good health, free from every care, with a well-filled purse; I gave no thought to the future; I indulged every whim,-in fact, I lived like a flower that expands in the sun. The idea that man is but a plant, and that its flower can only live a short time, had not yet occurred to me. Youth, says a Russian proverb, lives upon gilded gingerbread, which it ingenuously takes for bread; then one day even bread fails. But of what use are these digressions? I travelled from place to place, with no definite plan, stopping where it suited me, moving at once when I felt the need of seeing new faces,-nothing more.