Love, dear, is in my eyes the first principle of all the virtues, conformed to the divine likeness.  Like all other first principles, it is not a matter of arithmetic; it is the Infinite in us.  I cannot but think you have been trying to justify in your own eyes the frightful position of a girl, married to a man for whom she feels nothing more than esteem.  You prate of duty, and make it your rule and measure; but surely to take necessity as the spring of action is the moral theory of atheism?  To follow the impulse of love and feeling is the secret law of every woman’s heart.  You are acting a man’s part, and your Louis will have to play the woman!

Oh! my dear, your letter has plunged me into an endless train of thought.  I see now that the convent can never take the place of mother to a girl.  I beg of you, my grand angel with the black eyes, so pure and proud, so serious and so pretty, do not turn away from these cries, which the first reading of your letter has torn from me!  I have taken comfort in the thought that, while I was lamenting, love was doubtless busy knocking down the scaffolding of reason.

It may be that I shall do worse than you without any reasoning or calculations.  Passion is an element in life bound to have a logic not less pitiless than yours.

Monday.

Yesterday night I placed myself at the window as I was going to bed, to look at the sky, which was wonderfully clear.  The stars were like silver nails, holding up a veil of blue.  In the silence of the night I could hear some one breathing, and by the half-light of the stars I saw my Spaniard, perched like a squirrel on the branches of one of the trees lining the boulevard, and doubtless lost in admiration of my windows.

The first effect of this discovery was to make me withdraw into the room, my feet and hands quite limp and nerveless; but, beneath the fear, I was conscious of a delicious undercurrent of joy.  I was overpowered but happy.  Not one of those clever Frenchmen, who aspire to marry me, has had the brilliant idea of spending the night in an elm-tree at the risk of being carried off by the watch.  My Spaniard has, no doubt, been there for some time.  Ah! he won’t give me any more lessons, he wants to receive them—­well, he shall have one.  If only he knew what I said to myself about his superficial ugliness!  Others can philosophize besides you, Renee!  It was horrid, I argued, to fall in love with a handsome man.  Is it not practically avowing that the senses count for three parts out of four in a passion which ought to be super-sensual?

Having got over my first alarm, I craned my neck behind the window in order to see him again—­and well was I rewarded!  By means of a hollow cane he blew me in through the window a letter, cunningly rolled round a leaden pellet.

Good Heavens! will he suppose I left the window open on purpose?

But what was to be done?  To shut it suddenly would be to make oneself an accomplice.