Thus day after day went by, and, for the delusive sake of Madame de Marignan’s bright eyes, I neglected my studies, spent my money, wasted my time, and incurred the displeasure of Dr. Cheron.  Led on from folly to folly, I was perpetually buoyed up by coquetries which meant nothing, and as perpetually mortified, disappointed, and neglected.  I hoped; I feared; I fretted; I lost my sleep and my appetite; I felt dissatisfied with all the world, sometimes blaming myself, and sometimes her—­yet ready to excuse and forgive her at a moment’s notice.  A boy in experience even more than in years, I loved with a boy’s headlong passion, and suffered with all a boy’s acute susceptibility.  I was intensely sensitive—­abashed by a slight, humbled by a glance, and so easily wounded that there were often times when, seeing myself forgotten, I could with difficulty drive back the tears that kept rising to my eyes.  On the other hand, I was as easily elated.  A kind word, an encouraging smile, a lingering touch upon my sleeve, was enough at any time to make me forget all my foregone troubles.  How often the mere gift of a flower sent me home rejoicing!  How the tiniest show of preference set my heart beating!  How proud I was if mine was the arm chosen to lead her to her carriage!  How more than happy, if allowed for even one half-hour in the whole evening to occupy the seat beside her own!  To dangle after her the whole day long—­to traverse all Paris on her errands—­to wait upon her pleasure like a slave, and this, too, without even expecting to be thanked for my devotion, seemed the most natural thing in the world.  She was capricious; but caprice became her.  She was exacting; but her exactions were so coquettish and attractive, that one would not have wished her more reasonable.  She was, at least, ten or twelve years my senior; but boys proverbially fall in love with women older than themselves, and this one was in all respects so charming, that I do not, even now, wonder at my infatuation.

After all, there are few things under heaven more beautiful, or more touching, than a boy’s first love.

Passionate is it as a man’s—­pure as a woman’s—­trusting as a child’s—­timid, through the very excess of its unselfishness—­chivalrous, as though handed down direct from the days of old romance—­poetical beyond the utterances of the poet.  To the boy-lover, his mistress is only something less than a divinity.  He believes in her truth as in his own; in her purity, as in the sun at noon.  Her practised arts of voice and manner are, in his eyes, the unstudied graces that spring as naturally from her beauty as the scent from the flower.  Single-hearted himself, it seems impossible that she whom he adores should trifle with the most sacred sentiment he has ever known.  Conscious of his own devotion, he cannot conceive that his wealth is poured forth in vain, and that he is but the plaything of her idle hours.  Yet it is so.  The boy’s first love is almost always misplaced; seldom rated