“My dear Felix,” she said, after we had taken a turn in silence under the leafless trees, “you are about to enter the world, and I wish to go with you in thought.  Those who have suffered much have lived and known much.  Do not think that solitary souls know nothing of the world; on the contrary, they are able to judge it.  Hear me:  If I am to live in and for my friend I must do what I can for his heart and for his conscience.  When the conflict rages it is hard to remember rules; therefore let me give you a few instructions, the warnings of a mother to her son.  The day you leave us I shall give you a letter, a long letter, in which you will find my woman’s thoughts on the world, on society, on men, on the right methods of meeting difficulty in this great clash of human interests.  Promise me not to read this letter till you reach Paris.  I ask it from a fanciful sentiment, one of those secrets of womanhood not impossible to understand, but which we grieve to find deciphered; leave me this covert way where as a woman I wish to walk alone.”

“Yes, I promise it,” I said, kissing her hand.

“Ah,” she added, “I have one more promise to ask of you; but grant it first.”

“Yes, yes!” I cried, thinking it was surely a promise of fidelity.

“It does not concern myself,” she said smiling, with some bitterness.  “Felix, do not gamble in any house, no matter whose it be; I except none.”

“I will never play at all,” I replied.

“Good,” she said.  “I have found a better use for your time than to waste it on cards.  The end will be that where others must sooner or later be losers you will invariably win.”

“How so?”

“The letter will tell you,” she said, with a playful smile, which took from her advice the serious tone which might certainly have been that of a grandfather.

The countess talked to me for an hour, and proved the depth of her affection by the study she had made of my nature during the last three months.  She penetrated the recesses of my heart, entering it with her own; the tones of her voice were changeful and convincing; the words fell from maternal lips, showing by their tone as well as by their meaning how many ties already bound us to each other.

“If you knew,” she said in conclusion, “with what anxiety I shall follow your course, what joy I shall feel if you walk straight, what tears I must shed if you strike against the angles!  Believe that my affection has no equal; it is involuntary and yet deliberate.  Ah, I would that I might see you happy, powerful, respected,—­you who are to me a living dream.”

She made me weep, so tender and so terrible was she.  Her feelings came boldly to the surface, yet they were too pure to give the slightest hope even to a young man thirsting for pleasure.  Ignoring my tortured flesh, she shed the rays, undeviating, incorruptible, of the divine love, which satisfies the soul only.  She rose to heights whither the prismatic pinions of a love like mine were powerless to bear me.  To reach her a man must needs have won the white wings of the seraphim.