me a small bit, had given me a splendid lock, full a yard and a half long.  Having thought it over, I called upon a Jewish confectioner whose daughter was a skilful embroiderer, and I made her embroider before me, on a bracelet of green satin, the four initial letters of our names, and make a very thin chain with the remainder.  I had a piece of black ribbon added to one end of the chain, in the shape of a sliding noose, with which I could easily strangle myself if ever love should reduce me to despair, and I passed it round my neck.  As I did not want to lose even the smallest particle of so precious a treasure, I cut with a pair of scissors all the small bits which were left, and devoutly gathered them together.  Then I reduced them into a fine powder, and ordered the Jewish confectioner to mix the powder in my presence with a paste made of amber, sugar, vanilla, angelica, alkermes and storax, and I waited until the comfits prepared with that mixture were ready.  I had some more made with the same composition, but without any hair; I put the first in a beautiful sweetmeat box of fine crystal, and the second in a tortoise-shell box.

From the day when, by giving me her hair, Madame F——­ had betrayed the secret feelings of her heart, I no longer lost my time in relating stories or adventures; I only spoke to her of my cove, of my ardent desires; I told her that she must either banish me from her presence, or crown my happiness, but the cruel, charming woman would not accept that alternative.  She answered that happiness could not be obtained by offending every moral law, and by swerving from our duties.  If I threw myself at her feet to obtain by anticipation her forgiveness for the loving violence I intended to use against her, she would repulse me more powerfully than if she had had the strength of a female Hercules, for she would say, in a voice full of sweetness and affection,

“My friend, I do not entreat you to respect my weakness, but be generous enough to spare me for the sake of all the love I feel for you.”

“What! you love me, and you refuse to make me happy!  It is impossible! it is unnatural.  You compel me to believe that you do not love me.  Only allow me to press my lips one moment upon your lips, and I ask no more.”

“No, dearest, no; it would only excite the ardour of your desires, shake my resolution, and we should then find ourselves more miserable than we are now.”

Thus did she every day plunge me in despair, and yet she complained that my wit was no longer brilliant in society, that I had lost that elasticity of spirits which had pleased her so much after my arrival from Constantinople.  M. D---- R-----, who often jestingly waged war against me, used to say that I was getting thinner and thinner every day.  Madame F——­ told me one day that my sickly looks were very disagreeable to her, because wicked tongues would not fail to say that she treated me with cruelty.  Strange, almost unnatural thought!  On it I composed an idyll which I cannot read, even now, without feeling tears in my eyes.