“You tell me in your letter that, by the time I read it, you will be far away.  It is now my turn to repeat the same words.  When you come back to your rooms, mine will be empty.  I shall be gone; all I ask is, that you will not attempt to seek me.

“Farewell.  I accept your gift.  Perhaps I act selfishly in taking it, but a day may come when I shall justify that selfishness to you.  In the meantime, once again farewell.  You are my only friend, and these are the saddest words I have ever written—­forget me!

“HORTENSE.”

I scarcely know how I felt, or what I did, on first reading this letter.  I believe that I stood for a long time stone still, incapable of realizing the extent of my misfortune.  By-and-by it seemed to rush upon me suddenly.  I threw open my window, scaled the balcony rails, and forced my way into her rooms.

Her rooms!  Ah, by that window she used to sit—­at that table she read and wrote—­in that bed she slept!  All around and about were scattered evidences of her presence.  Upon the chimney-piece lay an envelope addressed to her name—­upon the floor, some fragments of torn paper and some ends of cordage!  The very flowers were yet fresh upon her balcony!  The sight of these things, while they confirmed my despair, thawed the ice at my heart.  I kissed the envelope that she had touched, the flowers she had tended, the pillow on which her head had been wont to rest.  I called wildly on her name.  I threw myself on the floor in my great agony, and wept aloud.

I cannot tell how long I may have lain there; but it seemed like a lifetime.  Long enough, at all events, to drink the bitter draught to the last drop—­long enough to learn that life had now no grief in store for which I should weep again.

CHAPTER LIV.

TREATETH OF MANY THINGS; BUT CHIEFLY OF BOOKS AND POETS.

     Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know,
     Are a substantial world, both pure and good.

     WORDSWORTH.

There are times when this beautiful world seems to put on a mourning garb, as if sympathizing, like a gentle mother, with the grief that consumes us; when the trees shake their arms in mute sorrow, and scatter their faded leaves like ashes on our heads; when the slow rains weep down upon us, and the very clouds look cold above.  Then, like Hamlet the Dane, we take no pleasure in the life that weighs so wearily upon us, and deem “this goodly frame, the earth, a sterile promonotory; this most excellent canopy, the air, this brave, overhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.”

So it was with me, in the heavy time that followed my return to Paris.  I had lost everything in losing her I loved.  I had no aim in life.  No occupation.  No hope.  No rest.  The clouds had rolled between me and the sun, and wrapped me in their cold shadows, and all was dark about me.  I felt that I could say with an old writer—­“For the world, I count it, not an inn, but an hospital; and a place, not to live, but to die in.”