leave you without knowing that you were under the care of those who
love you. Last night, at midnight, when you opened the window, and
looked at the star, and sighed, I was there! You might have heard my
voice. When you read these lines I shall be far away!"




L.


I travelled day and night in such complete dizziness of thought that I
felt neither cold, hunger nor distance, and arrived at M---- as if
awaking from a dream, and scarcely remembered that I had been to Paris.
I found my friend Louis awaiting me at my father's house in the
country. His presence was soothing to me; I could at least speak to him
of her whom he admired as much as I did. We slept in the same room, and
part of our nights were spent in talking of the heavenly vision, by
which he had been as dazzled as myself. He considered her as one of
those delusions of fancy, one of those women above mortal height, like
Tasso's Eleanora, Dante's Beatrice, Petrarch's Laura, or Vittoria
Colonna, the lover, the poet, and the heroine at once,--forms that flit
across the earth, scarcely touching it, and without tarrying, only to
fascinate the eyes of some men, the privileged few of love, to lead on
their souls to immortal aspirations, and to be the _sursum corda_ of
superior imaginations. As to Louis, he dared not raise his love as high
as his enthusiasm. His sensitive and tender heart, which had been early
wounded, was at that time filled with the image of a poor and pious
orphan, one of his own family. His happiness would have been to have
married her, and to live in obscurity and peace in a cottage among the