seemed hovering between life and death, and only detained on earth, he
said, by the ineffable love she bore to me. He always spoke to me of
her as of a heavenly gift, sent to my eyes and heart, and which would
raise me above human nature as long as I remained enveloped in her
radiance. V----, who was persuaded of the holy and superhuman nature of
our attachment, considered it as a virtue, and felt no repugnance to
being the mediator and confidant of our love. Julie, on her part, spoke
of V---- as the only friend she considered worthy of me, and for whom
she would have wished to increase my friendship, instead of detracting
from it by a mean jealousy of the heart. Both urged me to come to
Paris, but V----, alone, knew the secret motives, and the strictly
material impossibility, which had detained me till then. Spite of his
devoted friendship, of which he gave me, until his death, so many
proofs during the troubles of my life, it was not in his power at that
time to remove the obstacles that arrested me. His mother had exhausted
her means to give him an education befitting his rank, and to allow him
to travel through Europe. He was himself deep in debt, and could only
offer me a corner in the apartment that his family provided for him. As
to all the rest, he was, at that time of his life, as poor and as much
enslaved as myself by the want so cruelly defined by Horace--_Res
angustæ domi_.

I left M---- in a little one-horse jaunting car, consisting of a wooden
seat on an axle-tree, and four poles which supported a tarpaulin to
shelter us against the rain. These cars changed horses every four or
five miles, and served to convey to Paris the masons from the
Bourbonnais and from Auvergne, the weary pedestrians they met on the
road, and soldiers lamed by their long marches who were glad to spare a
day's fatigue for a few sous. I felt no shame or annoyance at this
vulgar mode of conveyance; I would have travelled barefooted through