I did not know which way to turn, and I felt my own value!  I wandered about, gloomy and hurt, through the lonely places of Paris—­Paris which had slipped through my fingers —­thinking of my crushed ambitions, but never giving them up.  Oh, what frantic letters I wrote at that time to her, my second conscience, my other self!  Sometimes I would say to myself, ’Why did I sketch so vast a programme of life?  Why demand everything?  Why not wait for happiness while devoting myself to some mechanical employment.’

“I then looked about me for some modest appointment by which I might live.  I was about to get the editorship of a paper under a manager who did not know much about it, a man of wealth and ambition, when I took fright.  ’Would she ever accept as her husband a man who had stooped so low?’ I wondered.

“This reflection made me two-and-twenty again.  But, oh, my dear Leopold, how the soul is worn by these perplexities!  What must not the caged eagles suffer, and imprisoned lions!—­They suffer what Napoleon suffered, not at Saint Helena, but on the Quay of the Tuileries, on the 10th of August, when he saw Louis XVI. defending himself so badly while he could have quelled the insurrection; as he actually did, on the same spot, a little later, in Vendemiaire.  Well, my life has been a torment of that kind, extending over four years.  How many a speech to the Chamber have I not delivered in the deserted alleys of the Bois de Boulogne!  These wasted harangues have at any rate sharpened my tongue and accustomed my mind to formulate its ideas in words.  And while I was undergoing this secret torture, you were getting married, you had paid for your business, you were made law-clerk to the Maire of your district, after gaining a cross for a wound at Saint-Merri.

“Now, listen.  When I was a small boy and tortured cock-chafers, the poor insects had one form of struggle which used almost to put me in a fever.  It was when I saw them making repeated efforts to fly but without getting away, though they could spread their wings.  We used to say, ‘They are marking time.’  Now was this sympathy?  Was it a vision of my own future?—­Oh! to spread my wings and yet be unable to fly!  That has been my predicament since that fine undertaking by which I was disgusted, but which has now made four families rich.

“At last, seven months ago, I determined to make myself a name at the Paris Bar, seeing how many vacancies had been left by the promotion of several lawyers to eminent positions.  But when I remembered the rivalry I had seen among men of the press, and how difficult it is to achieve anything of any kind in Paris, the arena where so many champions meet, I came to a determination painful to myself, but certain in its results, and perhaps quicker than any other.  In the course of our conversations you had given me a picture of the society of Besancon,