Saint-Honore. If I win back Honorine, I will not allow her to see this
house again, nor the room from which she fled. I mean to place my idol
in a new temple, where she may feel that life is altogether new. That
house is being made a marvel of elegance and taste. I have been told
of a poet who, being almost mad with love for an actress, bought the
handsomest bed in Paris without knowing how the actress would reward
his passion. Well, one of the coldest of lawyers, a man who is
supposed to be the gravest adviser of the Crown, was stirred to the
depths of his heart by that anecdote. The orator of the Legislative
Chamber can understand the poet who fed his ideal on material
possibilities. Three days before the arrival of Maria Louisa, Napoleon
flung himself on his wedding bed at Compiegne. All stupendous passions
have the same impulses. I love as a poet--as an emperor!'

"As I heard the last words, I believed that Count Octave's fears were
realized; he had risen, and was walking up and down, and
gesticulating, but he stopped as if shocked by the vehemence of his
own words.

"'I am very ridiculous,' he added, after a long pause, looking at me,
as if craving a glance of pity.

"'No, monsieur, you are very unhappy.'

"'Ah yes!' said he, taking up the thread of his confidences. 'From
the violence of my speech you may, you must believe in the intensity
of a physical passion which for nine years has absorbed all my
faculties; but that is nothing in comparison with the worship I feel
for the soul, the mind, the heart, all in that woman; the enchanting
divinities in the train of Love, with whom we pass our life, and who