Your letter, my dear Edgar, is filled with that calm happiness that is the foundation of all true love; in return, I can only send you an account of my despair.  Friendship is often a union of these two contrasts.

Enjoy your happy lot, my friend; your reputation is made.  You have a good name, an enviable and an individual philosophy, borrowed neither from the Greeks nor the Germans.  Your future is beautiful; cherish the sweetest dreams; the woman you love will realize them all.

Night is a bad counsellor, so I dare not make any resolutions, or come to any decision at this dark hour.  I shall wait for the sun to enlighten my mind.

In my despair I have the mournful consolation of knowing that Irene is in Paris.  This great city has no undiscovered secrets; everything and every person hid in its many houses is obliged sooner or later to appear in the streets.  I form the most extravagant projects; I will buy, if necessary, the indiscretion of all the discreet lips that guard the doors; I shall recruit an army of salaried spies.  On the coast of the Coromandel there is a tribe of Indians whose profession is to dive into the Gulf of Bengal, that immense bathing-tub of the sun, and search for a beautiful pearl that lies buried among the coral beds at the bottom of the ocean.  It is a pearl of great price, as valuable as the finest diamond....  Irene is my pearl of great price, and I will search for and find her in this great ocean of men and houses called Paris....  After thinking and wondering till I am dizzy and sick at heart, I have come to the conclusion that Irene is acting in this manner to test my love—­this thought consoles me a little, and I try to drown my sorrow in the thought of our mutual happiness, when I shall have triumphantly passed through the ordeal.

The most charming of women is willing to believe that everybody loves except her lover.

ROGER DE MONBERT.

XII.

IRENE DE CHATEAUDUN to MME. LA VICOMTESSE DE BRAIMES,
Grenoble, (Isere).

PARIS, June 2d—­Midnight.

Oh!  How indignant I am!  How angry and mortified are my feelings!  Good Heavens! how his shameful conduct makes me hate and despise him!...  I will try to be calm—­to collect my scattered thoughts and give you a clear account of what has just occurred—­tell you how all of my plans are destroyed—­how I am once more alone in this cruel world, more sad, more discouraged and more hopeless than I ever was in my darkest days of misery and poverty.... but I cannot be calm—­it is impossible for me to control my indignation when I think of the shameful behavior of this man—­of his gross impertinence—­his insolent duplicity....  Well, I went to the Odeon; M. de Monbert was there, I saw him, he certainly made no attempt to conceal his presence; you know he plumes himself upon being open and frank—­never hides anything from the world—­wishes people