in Paris.  May I not suppose that some one of those mermaids has deigned to clasp you in her cold and scaly arms, and that she has inspired the answer whose prosaic opinions sadden me?  There is something in life more beautiful than the garlands of Parisian coquetry; there grows a flower far up those Alpine peaks called men of genius, the glory of humanity, which they fertilize with the dews their lofty heads draw from the skies.  I seek to cultivate that flower and make it bloom; for its wild yet gentle fragrance can never fail,—­it is eternal.

Do me the honor to believe that there is nothing low or commonplace in me.  Were I Bettina, for I know to whom you allude, I should never have become Madame von Arnim; and had I been one of Lord Byron’s many loves, I should be at this moment in a cloister.  You have touched me to the quick.  You do not know me, but you shall know me.  I feel within me something that is sublime, of which I dare speak without vanity.  God has put into my soul the roots of that Alpine flower born on the summits of which I speak, and I cannot plant it in an earthen pot upon my window-sill and see it die.  No, that glorious flower-cup, single in its beauty, intoxicating in its fragrance, shall not be dragged through the vulgarities of life! it is yours—­yours, before any eye has blighted it, yours forever!  Yes, my poet, to you belong my thoughts,—­all, those that are secret, those that are gayest; my heart is yours without reserve and with its infinite affection.  If you should personally not please me, I shall never marry.  I can live in the life of the heart, I can exist on your mind, your sentiments; they please me, and I will always be what I am, your friend.  Yours is a noble moral nature; I have recognized it, I have appreciated it, and that suffices me.  In that is all my future.  Do not laugh at a young and pretty handmaiden who shrinks not from the thought of being some day the old companion of a poet,—­a sort of mother perhaps, or a housekeeper; the guide of his judgment and a source of his wealth.  This handmaiden—­so devoted, so precious to the lives of such as you—­is Friendship, pure, disinterested friendship, to whom you will tell all, who listens and sometimes shakes her head; who knits by the light of the lamp and waits to be present when the poet returns home soaked with rain, or vexed in mind.  Such shall be my destiny if I do not find that of a happy wife attached forever to her husband; I smile alike at the thought of either fate.  Do you believe France will be any the worse if Mademoiselle d’Este does not give it two or three sons, and never becomes a Madame Vilquin-something-or-other?  As for me, I shall never be an old maid.  I shall make myself a mother, by taking care of others and by my secret co-operation in the existence of a great man, to whom also I shall carry all my thoughts and all my earthly efforts.

I have the deepest horror of commonplaceness.