Isolation will certainly be my lot, and the artist-life, in which a man lives alone and draws from himself like the Great Creator whose work he toils to imitate, has predisposed me to welcome the situation.  But although, in the beginning especially, it will deprive me of all influence in the lobbies, it may serve me well in the tribune, where I shall be able to speak with strength and freedom.  Being bound by no promises and by no party trammels, nothing will prevent me from being the man I am, and expressing, in all their sacred crudity, the ideas which I think sound and just.  I know very well that before an audience plain, honest truth may fail to be contagious or even welcome.  But have you never remarked that, by using our opportunities wisely, we finally meet with days which may be called the festivals of morality and intelligence, days on which, naturally and almost without effort, the thought of good triumphs?

I do not, however, conceal from myself that, although I may reach to some reputation as an orator, such a course will never lead to a ministry, and that it does not bestow that reputation of being a practical man to which it is now the fashion to sacrifice so much.  But if at arm’s length in the tribune I have but little influence, I shall make my mark at a greater distance.  I shall speak as it were from a window, beyond the close and narrow sphere of parliamentary discussion, and above the level of its petty passions and its petty interests.  This species of success appears to meet the views of the mysterious paternal intentions toward me.  What they seem to require is that I shall sound and resound.  From that point of view, i’ faith, politics have a poetic side which is not out of keeping with my past life.

Now, to take up your other warning:  that of my passion born or to be born for Madame de l’Estorade.  I quote your most judicious deductions for the purpose of answering them fully.

In 1837, when you left for Italy, Madame de l’Estorade was, you say, in the flower of her beauty; and the queer, audacious persistence which I have shown in deriving inspiration from her shows that it has not faded.  Hence, if the evil be not already done, you warn me to be on my guard; from the admiration of an artist to the adoration of the man there is but a step, and the history of the late Pygmalion is commended to my study.

In the first place, learned doctor and mythologian, allow me this remark.  Being on the spot and therefore much better placed than you to judge of the dangers of the situation, I can assure you that the principal person concerned does not appear to feel the least anxiety.  Monsieur de l’Estorade quarrels with me for one thing only:  he thinks my visits too few, and my reserve misanthropy.

Parbleu!  I hear you say, a husband is always the last to know that his wife is being courted.  So be it.  But the high renown of Madame de l’Estorade’s virtue, her cold and rather calculating good sense, which often served to balance the ardent and passionate impetuosity of one you knew well,—­what of that?  And will you not grant that motherhood as it appears in that lady—­pushed to a degree of fervor which I might almost call fanaticism—­would be to her an infallible preservative?