heart, proud dream, a perfect choice, a jealous love sometimes making
all other love impossible! Oh, my beautiful ideal! Must I then say
farewell? Now I no longer dare to invoke thee!...

But what folly! Why am I so silly as to permit the remembrance of an
ideal to haunt me like a remorse? Why do I suffer it to make me unjust
towards noble and generous qualities that I should worthily appreciate?

Do not laugh at me, Valentine, when I assure you that my greatest
distress is that my lover does not resemble in any respect my ideal, and
I am provoked that I love him--I cannot deceive myself, the contrast is
striking--judge for yourself.

You may laugh if you will, but the whole secret of my distress is the
contrast between these two portraits.

My lover has handsome, intelligent blue eyes--my ideal's eyes are black,
full of sadness and fire, not the soft, troubadour eye with long
drooping lids--no! My ideal's glance has none of the languishing
tenderness of romance, but is proud, powerful, penetrating, the look of
a thinker, of a great mind yielding to the influence of love, the gaze
of a hero disarmed by passion!

My lover is tall and slender--my ideal is only a head taller than myself
... Ah! I know you are laughing at me, Valentine! Well! I sometimes
laugh at myself....

My lover is frankness personified--my ideal is not a sly knave, but he
is mysterious; he never utters his thoughts, but lets you divine, or
rather he speaks to a responsive sentiment in your own bosom.