sometimes , indeed , i felt a wish for happiness ; and thought , with melancholy delight , of my beloved cousin ; or longed , with a devouring maladie du pays , at to see once more the blue lake and rapid rhone that had been so dear to me in early childhood : but my general state of feeling was a torpor in which a prison was as welcome a residence as the divinest scene in nature ; and these fits were seldom interrupted but by paroxysms of anguish and despair .