Will you have a confession?  I said to myself when I saw you so distrustful, and mistaking me for Corinne (whose improvisations bore me dreadfully), that in all probability dozes of Muses had already led you, rashly curious, into their valleys, and begged you to taste the fruits of their boarding-school Parnassus.  Oh! you are perfectly safe with me, my friend; I may love poetry, but I have no little verses in my pocket-book, and my stockings are, and will remain, immaculately white.  You shall not be pestered with the “Flowers of my Heart” in one or more volumes.  And, finally, should it ever happen that I say to you the word “Come!” you will not find—­you know it now—­an old maid, no, nor a poor and ugly one.

Ah! my friend, if you only knew how I regret that you came to Havre!  You have lowered the charm of what you call my romance.  God alone knew the treasure I was reserving for the man noble enough, and trusting enough, and perspicacious enough to come—­having faith in my letters, having penetrated step by step into the depths of my heart—­to come to our first meeting with the simplicity of a child:  for that was what I dreamed to be the innocence of a man of genius.  And now you have spoiled my treasure!  But I forgive you; you live in Paris and, as you say, there is always a man within a poet.

Because I tell you this will you think me some little girl who cultivates a garden-full of illusions?  You, who are witty and wise, have you not guessed that when Mademoiselle d’Este received your pedantic lesson she said to herself:  “No, dear poet, my first letter was not the pebble which a vagabond child flings about the highway to frighten the owner of the adjacent fruit-trees, but a net carefully and prudently thrown by a fisherman seated on a rock above the sea, hoping and expecting a miraculous draught.”

All that you say so beautifully about the family has my approval.  The man who is able to please me, and of whom I believe myself worthy, will have my heart and my life,—­with the consent of my parents, for I will neither grieve them, nor take them unawares:  happily, I am certain of reigning over them; and, besides, they are wholly without prejudice.  Indeed, in every way, I feel myself protected against any delusions in my dream.  I have built the fortress with my own hands, and I have let it be fortified by the boundless devotion of those who watch over me as if I were a treasure,—­not that I am unable to defend myself in the open, if need be; for, let me say, circumstances have furnished me with armor of proof on which is engraved the word “Disdain.”  I have the deepest horror of all that is calculating,—­of all that is not pure, disinterested, and wholly noble.  I worship the beautiful, the ideal, without being romantic; though I have been, in my heart of hearts, in my dreams.  But I recognize the truth of the various things, just even to vulgarity,