The opera was Romeo and Juliet.  As you don’t know the duet of the two lovers, you can’t understand the bliss of two neophytes in love, as they listen to this divine outpouring of the heart.

On returning home I went to bed, but only to count the steps which resounded on the sidewalk.  My heart and head, darling, are all on fire now.  What is he doing?  What is he thinking of?  Has he a thought, a single thought, that is not of me?  Is he, in very truth, the devoted slave he painted himself?  How to be sure?  Or, again, has it ever entered his head that, if I accept him, I lay myself open to the shadow of a reproach or am in any sense rewarding or thanking him?  I am harrowed by the hair-splitting casuistry of the heroines in Cyrus and Astraea, by all the subtle arguments of the court of love.

Has he any idea that, in affairs of love, a woman’s most trifling actions are but the issue of long brooding and inner conflicts, of victories won only to be lost!  What are his thoughts at this moment?  How can I give him my orders to write every evening the particulars of the day just gone?  He is my slave whom I ought to keep busy.  I shall deluge him with work!

Sunday Morning.

Only towards morning did I sleep a little.  It is midday now.  I have just got Griffith to write the following letter: 

  “To the Baron de Macumer.

  “Mademoiselle de Chaulieu begs me, Monsieur le Baron, to ask you
  to return to her the copy of a letter written to her by a friend,
  which is in her own handwriting, and which you carried away. 
  —­Believe me, etc.,
“GRIFFITH.”

My dear, Griffith has gone out; she has gone to the Rue Hillerin-Bertin; she had handed in this little love-letter for my slave, who returned to me in an envelope my sweet portrait, stained with tears.  He has obeyed.  Oh! my sweet, it must have been dear to him!  Another man would have refused to send it in a letter full of flattery; but the Saracen has fulfilled his promises.  He has obeyed.  It moves me to tears.

XVII

THE SAME TO THE SAME
April 2nd.

Yesterday the weather was splendid.  I dressed myself like a girl who wants to look her best in her sweetheart’s eyes.  My father, yielding to my entreaties, has given me the prettiest turnout in Paris—­two dapple-gray horses and a barouche, which is a masterpiece of elegance.  I was making a first trial of this, and peeped out like a flower from under my sunshade lined with white silk.

As I drove up the avenue of the Champs-Elysees, I saw my Abencerrage approaching on an extraordinarily beautiful horse.  Almost every man nowadays is a finished jockey, and they all stopped to admire and inspect it.  He bowed to me, and on receiving a friendly sign of encouragement, slackened his horse’s pace so that I was able to say to him: 

“You are not vexed with me for asking for my letter; it was no use to you.”  Then in a lower voice, “You have already transcended the ideal. . . .  Your horse makes you an object of general interest,” I went on aloud.