“MADAME,—­Your power over my heart, my soul, myself, is so great that my fate depends wholly upon you to-day.  Do not throw this letter into the fire; be so kind as to read it through.  Perhaps you may pardon the opening sentence when you see that it is no commonplace, selfish declaration, but that it expresses a simple fact.  Perhaps you may feel moved, because I ask for so little, by the submission of one who feels himself so much beneath you, by the influence that your decision will exercise upon my life.  At my age, madame, I only know how to love, I am utterly ignorant of ways of attracting and winning a woman’s love, but in my own heart I know raptures of adoration of her.  I am irresistibly drawn to you by the great happiness that I feel through you; my thoughts turn to you with the selfish instinct which bids us draw nearer to the fire of life when we find it.  I do not imagine that I am worthy of you; it seems impossible that I, young, ignorant, and shy, could bring you one-thousandth part of the happiness that I drink in at the sound of your voice and the sight of you.  For me you are the only woman in the world.  I cannot imagine life without you, so I have made up my mind to leave France, and to risk my life till I lose it in some desperate enterprise, in the Indies, in Africa, I care not where.  How can I quell a love that knows no limits save by opposing to it something as infinite?  Yet, if you will allow me to hope, not to be yours, but to win your friendship, I will stay.  Let me come, not so very often, if you require it, to spend a few such hours with you as those stolen hours of yesterday.  The keen delight of that brief happiness to be cut short at the least over-ardent word from me, will suffice to enable me to endure the boiling torrent in my veins.  Have I presumed too much upon your generosity by this entreaty to suffer an intercourse in which all the gain is mine alone?  You could find ways of showing the world, to which you sacrifice so much, that I am nothing to you; you are so clever and so proud!  What have you to fear?  If I could only lay bare my heart to you at this moment, to convince you that it is with no lurking afterthought that I make this humble request!  Should I have told you that my love was boundless, while I prayed you to grant me friendship, if I had any hope of your sharing this feeling in the depths of my soul?  No, while I am with you, I will be whatever you will, if only I may be with you.  If you refuse (as you have the power to refuse), I will not utter one murmur, I will go.  And if, at a later day, any other woman should enter into my life, you will have proof that you were right; but if I am faithful till death, you may feel some regret perhaps.  The hope of causing you a regret will soothe my agony, and that thought shall be the sole revenge of a slighted heart. . . .”

Only those who have passed through all the exceeding tribulations of youth, who have seized on all the