But what folly!  Why am I so silly as to permit the remembrance of an ideal to haunt me like a remorse?  Why do I suffer it to make me unjust towards noble and generous qualities that I should worthily appreciate?

Do not laugh at me, Valentine, when I assure you that my greatest distress is that my lover does not resemble in any respect my ideal, and I am provoked that I love him—­I cannot deceive myself, the contrast is striking—­judge for yourself.

You may laugh if you will, but the whole secret of my distress is the contrast between these two portraits.

My lover has handsome, intelligent blue eyes—­my ideal’s eyes are black, full of sadness and fire, not the soft, troubadour eye with long drooping lids—­no!  My ideal’s glance has none of the languishing tenderness of romance, but is proud, powerful, penetrating, the look of a thinker, of a great mind yielding to the influence of love, the gaze of a hero disarmed by passion!

My lover is tall and slender—­my ideal is only a head taller than myself ...  Ah!  I know you are laughing at me, Valentine!  Well!  I sometimes laugh at myself....

My lover is frankness personified—­my ideal is not a sly knave, but he is mysterious; he never utters his thoughts, but lets you divine, or rather he speaks to a responsive sentiment in your own bosom.

My lover is what men call “A good fellow,” you are intimate with him in twenty-four hours.

My ideal is by no means “a good fellow,” and although he inspires confidence and respect, you are never at ease in his presence, there is a graceful dignity in his carriage, an imposing gentleness in his manner, that always inspires a kind of fear, a pleasing awe.

You remember, Valentine, when we were very young girls how we were wont to ask each other, in reading the annals of the past, what situations would have pleased us, what parts we would have liked to play, what great emotions we would have wished to experience; and how you pityingly laughed at my odd taste.

My dream,_par excellence_, was to die of fear; I never envied with you the famed heroines, the sublime shepherdesses who saved their country.  I envied the timid Esther fainting in the arms of her women at the fierce tones of Ahasuerus, and restored to consciousness by the same voice musically whispering the fondest words ever inspired by a royal love.

I also admired Semele, dying of fear and admiration at the frowns of a wrathful Jove, but her least of all, because I am terrified in a thunderstorm.

Well, I am still the same—­to love tremblingly is my fondest dream; I do not say, like pretty Madame de S., that I can only be captivated by a man with the passions of a tiger and the manners of a diplomate, I only declare that I cannot understand love without fear.

And yet my lover does not inspire me with the least fear, and against all reasoning, I mistrust a love that so little resembles the love I imagined.