written to Blois, at our sweet tryst of letter-writing.

Raise those great black eyes of yours, fixed on my opening sentence,
and keep this excitement for the letter which shall tell you of my
first love. By the way, why always "first?" Is there, I wonder, a
second love?

Don't go running on like this, you will say, but tell me rather how
you made your escape from the convent where you were to take your
vows. Well, dear, I don't know about the Carmelites, but the miracle
of my own deliverance was, I can assure you, most humdrum. The cries
of an alarmed conscience triumphed over the dictates of a stern policy
--there's the whole mystery. The sombre melancholy which seized me
after you left hastened the happy climax, my aunt did not want to see
me die of a decline, and my mother, whose one unfailing cure for my
malady was a novitiate, gave way before her.

So I am in Paris, thanks to you, my love! Dear Renee, could you have
seen me the day I found myself parted from you, well might you have
gloried in the deep impression you had made on so youthful a bosom. We
had lived so constantly together, sharing our dreams and letting our
fancy roam together, that I verily believe our souls had become welded
together, like those two Hungarian girls, whose death we heard about
from M. Beauvisage--poor misnamed being! Never surely was man better
cut out by nature for the post of convent physician!

Tell me, did you not droop and sicken with your darling?

In my gloomy depression, I could do nothing but count over the ties
which bind us. But it seemed as though distance had loosened them; I