who am I?  Ah! why have you called me to life?  I felt for a moment as though the heavy burden of the flesh was leaving me; my soul had broken the crystal which held it captive; it pervaded my whole being; the cold silence of material things had ceased; all things in nature had a voice and spoke to me.  The old church was luminous.  It’s arched roof, brilliant with gold and azure like those of an Italian cathedral, sparkled above my head.  Melodies such as the angels sang to martyrs, quieting their pains, sounded from the organ.  The rough pavements of Havre seemed to my feet a flowery mead; the sea spoke to me with a voice of sympathy, like an old friend whom I had never truly understood.  I saw clearly how the roses in my garden had long adored me and bidden me love; they lifted their heads and smiled as I came back from church.  I heard your name, “Melchior,” chiming in the flower-bells; I saw it written on the clouds.  Yes, yes, I live, I am living, thanks to thee,—­my poet, more beautiful than that cold, conventional Lord Byron, with a face as dull as the English climate.  One glance of thine, thine Orient glance, pierced through my double veil and sent thy blood to my heart, and from thence to my head and feet.  Ah! that is not the life our mother gave us.  A hurt to thee would hurt me too at the very instant it was given,—­my life exists by thy thought only.  I know now the purpose of the divine faculty of music; the angels invented it to utter love.  Ah, my Melchior, to have genius and to have beauty is too much; a man should be made to choose between them at his birth.

When I think of the treasures of tenderness and affection which you have given me, and more especially for the last month, I ask myself if I dream.  No, but you hide some mystery; what woman can yield you up to me and not die?  Ah! jealousy has entered my heart with love,—­love in which I could not have believed.  How could I have imagined so mighty a conflagration?  And now—­strange and inconceivable revulsion!—­I would rather you were ugly.

What follies I committed after I came home!  The yellow dahlias reminded me of your waistcoat, the white roses were my loving friends; I bowed to them with a look that belonged to you, like all that is of me.  The very color of the gloves, moulded to hands of a gentleman, your step along the nave,—­all, all, is so printed on my memory that sixty years hence I shall see the veriest trifles of this day of days,—­the color of the atmosphere, the ray of sunshine that flickered on a certain pillar; I shall hear the prayer your step interrupted; I shall inhale the incense of the altar; forever I shall feel above our heads the priestly hands that blessed us both as you passed by me at the closing benediction.  The good Abbe Marcelin married us then!  The happiness, above that of earth, which I feel in this new world of unexpected emotions can only be equalled by the joy of telling it to you, of sending it back to him who poured