that the young girl would have lived forever, inlaid in the glory of the poet as Mary Magdalene in the cross and triumph of our Lord.  If that is sublime, what say you to the reverse of the picture?  As I am neither Goethe nor Lord Byron, the colossi of poetry and egotism, but simply the author of a few esteemed verses, I cannot expect the honors of a cult.  Neither am I disposed to be a martyr.  I have ambition, and I have a heart; I am still young and I have my career to make.  See me for what I am.  The bounty of the king and the protection of his ministers give me sufficient means of living.  I have the outward bearing of a very ordinary man.  I go to the soirees in Paris like any other empty-headed fop; and if I drive, the wheels of my carriage do not roll on the solid ground, absolutely indispensable in these days, of property invested in the funds.  But if I am not rich, neither do I have the reliefs and consolations of life in a garret, the toil uncomprehended, the fame in penury, which belong to men who are worth far more than I,—­D’Arthez, for instance.

Ah! what prosaic conclusions will your young enthusiasm find to these enchanting visions.  Let us stop here.  If I have had the happiness of seeming to you a terrestrial paragon, you have been to me a thing of light and a beacon, like those stars that shine for a moment and disappear.  May nothing ever tarnish this episode of our lives.  Were we to continue it I might love you; I might conceive one of those mad passions which rend all obstacles, which light fires in the heart whose violence is greater than their duration.  And suppose I succeeded in pleasing you? we should end our tale in the common vulgar way,—­marriage, a household, children, Belise and Henriette Chrysale together!—­could it be?  Therefore, adieu.

CHAPTER X

The marriage of souls

To Monsieur de Canalis: 

My Friend,—­Your letter gives me as much pain as pleasure.  But perhaps some day we shall find nothing but pleasure in writing to each other.  Understand me thoroughly.  The soul speaks to God and asks him for many things; he is mute.  I seek to obtain in you the answers that God does not make to me.  Cannot the friendship of Mademoiselle de Gournay and Montaigne be revived in us?  Do you not remember the household of Sismonde de Sismondi in Geneva?  The most lovely home ever known, as I have been told; something like that of the Marquis de Pescaire and his wife,—­happy to old age.  Ah! friend, is it impossible that two hearts, two harps, should exist as in a symphony, answering each other from a distance, vibrating with delicious melody in unison?  Man alone of all creation is in himself the harp, the musician, and the listener.  Do you think to find me uneasy and jealous like ordinary women?  I know that you go into the world and meet the handsomest and the wittiest women