I received in Florence the last letter you directed to me at Rome.  What a number of questions you ask, and how am I to answer them all?

Don’t speak to me of Jerusalem, Cedron, Lebanon, Palmyra and Baalbec, or anything of the sort.  Read over again Rene’s Guide-book, Jocelyn’s Travels, the Orientales of Olympio, and you will know as much about the East as I do, though I have been there, according to your account, for the last two years.  However, I have performed all the commissions you gave me, on the eve of my departure, three years ago.  I bring you pipes from Constantinople, to your mother chaplets from Bethlehem—­only I bought the pipes at Leghorn, and the chaplets at Rome.

Do you remember a cold, rainy December evening in Paris, eighteen months ago, when I should have been on the borders of Afghanistan, or the shores of the Euphrates, you were walking along the quays, between eleven o’clock and midnight, walking rapidly, wrapped like a Castilian in the folds of your cloak?

Do you remember that between the Pont Neuf and the Pont Saint Michel you stumbled against a young man, enveloped likewise in a cloak, and following rapidly the course of the Seine in a direction opposite to yours?  The shock was violent, and nailed us both to the spot.  Do you remember that having scrutinized each other under the gaslight, you exclaimed, “Raymond,” and opened your arms to embrace me; then, seeing the cold and reserved attitude of him who stood silently before you, how you changed your mind and went your way, laughing at the mistake but struck by the resemblance?

The resemblance still exists; the young man that you called Raymond, was Raymond.

One more story, and I have done.  I will tell it without pride or pretence, a thing so natural, so simple, that it is neither worth boasting of nor concealing.

You know Frederick B. You remember that I have always spoken of him as a brother.  We played together in the same cradle; we grew up, as it were, under the same roof.  At school I prepared his lessons:  out of gratitude he ate my sugar-plums.  At college I performed his tasks and fought his battles.  At twenty, I received a sword-thrust in my breast on his account.  Later he plunged into matrimony and business, and we lost sight of, without ceasing to love each other.  I knew that he prospered, and I asked nothing more.  As for myself, tired of the sterile life I was leading, called fashionable life, I turned my fortune into ready money, and prepared to set out on a long journey.

The day of my departure—­I had bidden you good-bye the evening before—­Frederick entered my room.  A year had nearly passed since we had met; I did not know that he was in Paris.  I found him changed; his preoccupied air alarmed me.  However, I concealed my anxiety.  We cannot treat with too much reserve and delicacy the sadness of our married friends.  As he talked, two big tears rolled silently down his cheeks.  I had to speak.