but be warned!  If in the future I am tortured by discovering any glaring defects and odious peculiarities, that what you call my indiscretion might have revealed before it was too late, you will permit me to come and complain to you every day, and you must promise to listen to my endless lamentations as I repeat over and over again.  O Valentine, I have learned too late what I might have known in time to save me!  Valentine, I am miserable and disappointed—­console me! console me!

Doubtless to a young girl reared like yourself in affluence under your mother’s eye, this strange conduct appears culpable and indelicate; but remember, that with me it is the natural result of the sad life I have led for the last three years; this disguise, that I reassume from fancy, was then worn from necessity, and I have earned the right of borrowing it a little while longer from misfortune to assist me in guarding against new sorrows.  Am I not justified in wishing to profit by experience too dearly bought?  Is it not just that I should demand from the sad past some guarantees for a brighter future, and make my bitter sorrows the stepping-stones to a happy life?  But, as I intend to follow your advice, I’ll do it gracefully without again alluding to my frustrated plans.

To-morrow I return to Fontainebleau.  I stayed there five days when I went back with Madame Langeac; I only intended to remain a few minutes, but my cousin was so uneasy at finding her daughter worse, that I did not like to leave before the doctor pronounced her better.  This illness will assist me greatly in the fictions I am going to write Roger from Fontainebleau to-morrow.  I will tell him we were obliged to leave suddenly, without having time to bid him adieu, to go and nurse a sick relative; that she is better now, and Madame de Langeac and I will return to Paris next week.  In three days I shall return, and no one will ever know I have been to Pont de l’Arche, except M. de Meilhan, who will doubtless soon forget all about it; besides, he intends remaining in Normandy till the end of the year, so there is no risk of our meeting.

Oh!  I must tell you about the amusing evening M. de Meilhan and I spent together at Madame Taverneau’s.  How we did laugh over it!  He was king of the feast, although he would not acknowledge it.  Madame Taverneau was so proud of entertaining the young lord of the village, that she had rushed into the most reckless extravagance to do him honor.  She had thrown the whole town in a state of excitement by sending to Rouen for a piano.  But the grand event of the evening was a clock.  Yet I must confess that the effect was quite different from what she expected—­it was a complete failure.  We usually sit in the dining-room, but for this grand occasion the parlor was opened.  On the mantel-piece in this splendid room there is a clock adorned by a dreadful bronze horse running away with a fierce warrior and some unheard-of Turkish female.  I