Contentment

    "He said to himself, as he wandered about in a great and lonely park: "How beautiful she would be in an elaborate and stately court dress, descending the marble steps of a palace, opposite great lawns and fountains and seen through the atmosphere of a lovely night. For she has the natural air of a princess." 
  Later, while passing along a street, he stopped he stopped before a picture shop, and finding in a folio a print of a tropical landscape, he said to himself: "No! It is not in a palace that I wish to posses her. We wouldn't feel at home there. Besides, the walls covered with gold would leave no room to hang her picture; in those solemn galleries there would not be a single cosy corner. Surely, it is here that I should live to cultivate my life-dream." 
And, while studying the details of the print, he continued mentally: "At the seashore, a lovely wood cabin, surrounded by all those fantastic and shining trees, whose names I have forgotten; in the air, an intoxicating, indefinable odor, in the cabin, a powerful perfume of rose and of musk; in the distance, behind our little domain, the tops of the masts rising and falling on the swell; around us, beyond the room full of rosy light filtering through the blinds, a room strewn with fresh mats and heavily scented flowers, with rare couches of a Portuguese rococo, made of heavy, dark wood (where she would lie, so serene, so carefully fanned, smoking a faintly opiumed tobacco!) and beyond the timbered floor, the noisy twittering of birds intoxicated with the light, and the idle chatter of little negresses; and at night, as an accompaniment to my dreams, the plaintive songs of the melodious trees, the sighs of the melancholy cassowary! Yes, here surely is the setting I seek. What have I to do with palaces!"
  And farther on, as he was walking along a wide avenue, he saw a neat little inn, where two laughing girls were leaning from a window brightly hung with checkered calico curtains. And at once he said to himself: "My thought must be a great vagabond since it went so far to seek what is so near. Pleasure and happiness can be found in the first inn one comes to, in the inn discovered by chance, and so full of delights. A roaring fire, colorful earthenware, a fair supper, a strong wine, and a very wide bed with sheets a bit rough, but fresh. What could be better?" 
  Returning home alone, at the hour when wisdom's choice can be heard above the buzz of activity, he said to himself: "I have had today, in my dreams, three dwelling places in which I found equal pleasure. Why compel my body to move about, since my soul travels so easily? and what is the use of carrying out any plan, since the plan itself is sufficient joy?" Charles Bauderlaire.