“I came to Chur,” he replied, “I entered a church, I there saw a fair unknown, and I forgot myself in gazing at her.  That evening I saw her again; she was walking in a garden where there was music, and this music of harps and violins was grateful to me.  I said within myself:  ’What a thing is the heart of man!  The woman who has passed me by without seeing me does not know me, will never know of my existence; I am ignorant of even her name, and I wish to remain so, but I am conscious that she exists, and I am glad, content, almost happy.  She will be for me the fair unknown; she cannot prevent me from remembering her.  I will think sometimes of the fair unknown of Chur.’”

“Very good,” said she, “but this does not explain the letter.”

“We are coming to that,” he continued.  “I was seated in a copse, by the roadside.  I had the blues—­was profoundly weary; there are times when life weighs on me like a torturing burden.  I thought of disappointed expectations, of dissipated illusions, of the bitterness of my youth and of my future.  You passed by on the road, and I said to myself, ’There is good in life, because of such encounters, in which we catch renewed glimpses of what was once pleasant for us to see.’”

“And the note?” she asked again, in a dreamy tone.

He went on:  “I never was a philosopher; wisdom consists in performing only useful actions, and I was born with a taste for the useless.  That evening I saw you climb a hill, in order to gather some flowers; the hill was steep and you could not reach the flowers.  I gathered them for you, and, in sending my bouquet, I could not resist the temptation of adding a word.  ‘Before doing penance,’ I said to myself, ’let me commit this one folly; it shall be the last.’  We always flatter ourselves that each folly will be our last.  The unfortunate note had scarcely gone, when I regretted having sent it; I would have given much to have had it back; I felt all its impropriety; I have dealt justly by it in tearing it to pieces.  My only excuse was my firm resolution not to meet you, not to make your acquaintance.  Chance ordered otherwise:  I was presented to you, you know by whom, and how; I ended by coming here every evening, but I rebelled against my own weakness, I condemned myself to absence for a few days, so as to break a dangerous habit, and, thank God!  I have broken my chain.”

She lightly tapped the floor with the tip of her foot, and demanded with the air of a queen recalling a subject to his allegiance, “Are you to be believed?”

He had spoken in a half-serious, half-jesting tone, tinged with the playful melancholy that was natural to him.  He changed countenance, his face flushed, and he cried out abruptly, “I regained my strength and will on the summit of Morteratsch, and I only return to bid you farewell, and to give you the assurance that I never will see you again.”

“It is a strange case,” she replied; “but I pardon you, on condition that you do not execute your threat.  You are resolved to be wise; the wise avoid extremes.  You will remember that you have friends in Paris.  My father has many connections; if we can be of service to you in any way—­”