The poet’s reflections during the night were thoroughly matter of fact.  He sincerely saw nothing worse in life than the situation of a married man without money.  Still trembling at the danger he had been led into by his vanity, his desire to get the better of the duke, and his belief in the Mignon millions, he began to ask himself what the duchess must be thinking of his stay in Havre, aggravated by the fact that he had not written to her for fourteen days, whereas in Paris they exchanged four or five letters a week.

“And that poor woman is working hard to get me appointed commander of the Legion and ambassador to the Court of Baden!” he cried.

Thereupon, with that promptitude of decision which results—­in poets as well as in speculators—­from a lively intuition of the future, he sat down and composed the following letter:—­

  To Madame la Duchesse de Chaulieu: 

My dear Eleonore,—­You have doubtless been surprised at not hearing from me; but the stay I am making in this place is not altogether on account of my health.  I have been trying to do a good turn to our little friend La Briere.  The poor fellow has fallen in love with a certain Mademoiselle Modeste de La Bastie, a rather pale, insignificant, and thread-papery little thing, who, by the way, has the vice of liking literature, and calls herself a poet to excuse the caprices and humors of a rather sullen nature.  You know Ernest,—­he is so easy to catch that I have been afraid to leave him to himself.  Mademoiselle de La Bastie was inclined to coquet with your Melchior, and was only too ready to become your rival, though her arms are thin, and she has no more bust than most girls; moreover, her hair is as dead and colorless as that of Madame de Rochefide, and her eyes small, gray, and very suspicious.  I put a stop—­perhaps rather brutally—­to the attentions of Mademoiselle Immodeste; but love, such as mine for you, demanded it.  What care I for all the women on earth, —­compared to you, what are they?

The people with whom I pass my time, and who form the circle round the heiress, are so thoroughly bourgeois that they almost turn my stomach.  Pity me; imagine!  I pass my evenings with notaries, notaresses, cashiers, provincial money-lenders—­ah! what a change from my evenings in the rue de Grenelle.  The alleged fortune of the father, lately returned from China, has brought to Havre that indefatigable suitor, the grand equerry, hungry after the millions, which he wants, they say, to drain his marshes.  The king does not know what a fatal present he made the duke in those waste lands.  His Grace, who has not yet found out that the lady had only a small fortune, is jealous of me; for La Briere is quietly making progress with his idol under cover of his friend, who serves as a blind.

Notwithstanding Ernest’s romantic ecstasies, I myself, a poet, think chiefly of the essential thing, and I have been making some inquiries