you are perhaps the only true happiness known to man!  For eight days we spent our time making purchases and preparing for our departure; then a young man presented himself at our apartments:  he brought letters to Brigitte.  After their interview I found her sad and distraught; but I could not guess the cause unless the letters were from N------, that village where I had confessed my love and where Brigitte’s only relatives lived.  Nevertheless, our preparations progressed rapidly and I became impatient to get away; at the same time I was so happy that I could hardly rest.  When I arose in the morning and the sun was shining through our windows, I experienced such transports of joy that I was almost intoxicated with happiness.  So anxious was I to prove the sincerity of my love for Brigitte that I hardly dared kiss the hem of her skirt.  Her lightest words made me tremble as if her voice were strange to me; I alternated between tears and laughter, and I never spoke of the past except with horror and disgust.  Our room was full of personal effects scattered about in disorder—­albums, pictures, books, and the dear map we loved so much.  We went to and fro about the little apartment; at brief intervals I would stop and kneel before Brigitte who would call me an idler, saying that she had to do all the work, and that I was good for nothing; and all sorts of projects flitted through our minds.  Sicily was far away, but the winters are so delightful there!  Genoa is very pretty with its painted houses, its green gardens, and the Apennines in the background!  But what noise!  What crowds!  Among every three men on the street, one is a monk and another a soldier.  Florence is sad, it is the Middle Ages living in the midst of modern life.  How can any one endure those grilled windows and that horrible brown color with which all the houses are tinted?

What could we do at Rome?  We were not travelling in order to forget ourselves, much less for the sake of instruction.  To the Rhine?  But the season was over, and although we did not care for the world of fashion, still it is sad to visit its haunts when it has fled.  But Spain?  Too many restrictions there; one travels like an army on the march, and may expect everything except repose.  Switzerland?  Too many people go there, and most of them are deceived as to the nature of its attractions; but in that land are unfolded the three most beautiful colors on God’s earth:  the azure of the sky, the verdure of the plains, and the whiteness of the snows on the summits of glaciers.

“Let us go, let us go!” cried Brigitte, “let us fly away like two birds.  Let us pretend, my dear Octave, that we met each other only yesterday.  You met me at a ball, I pleased you and I love you; you tell me that some leagues distant, in a certain little town, you loved a certain Madame Pierson; what passed between you and her I do not know.  You will not tell me the story of your love for another!  And I will whisper to you that not long since I loved a terrible fellow who made me very unhappy; you will reprove me and close my mouth, and we will agree never to speak of such things.”