A MISDIRECTED PASSION.

_7th October._


Dear Paul, I take part in your grief from the bottom of my heart. Allow
me, however, to assure you, from the very details of your own letter that
your dear mother's illness offers no alarming symptoms whatever. It is
one of those painful but harmless crises which the approach of winter
brings back upon her almost invariably every year, as you know. Patience
therefore, and courage, I beseech you.

It requires, my friend, the formal expression of your wishes to induce me
to venture upon mingling my petty troubles with your grave solicitude. As
you anticipated in your wisdom and in your kind friendship, it was
consolation and not advice that I stood in need of when I received your
letter. My heart is not at peace, and, what is worse for me, neither is my
conscience; and yet, I think I have done my duty. Have I understood it
right or not? Judge for yourself.

I take up my situation toward Madame de Palme where I had left it in my
last letter. The day after our mutual explanation, I took every care to
maintain our relations upon the footing of good-fellowship on which they
seemed established, and which constituted, in my idea, the only sort of
intelligence desirable and even possible between us. It seemed to me, on
that day, that she manifested the same vivacity and the same spirit as
usual; yet I fancied that her voice and her look, when she addressed me,
assumed a meek gravity which is not part of her usual disposition; but on
the following days, though I had not deviated from the line of conduct I
had marked out for myself, it became impossible for me not to notice that