the disappointed lover, I left it on my table with the intention of
reading it again the next day. It proved a useful precaution, for when I
read it over, twenty-four hours afterwards, I found it unworthy of me,
and tore it to pieces. It contained some sentences which savoured too
much of my weakness, my love, and my spite, and which, far from
humiliating her, would only have given her occasion to laugh at me.

On the Wednesday after I had written to C---- C---- that very serious
reasons compelled me to give up my visits to the church of her convent, I
wrote another letter to the nun, but on Thursday it had the same fate as
the first, because upon a second perusal I found the same deficiencies.
It seemed to me that I had lost the faculty of writing. Ten days
afterwards I found out that I was too deeply in love to have the power of
expressing myself in any other way than through the feelings of my heart.

'Sincerium est nisi vas, quodcunque infundis acescit.'

The face of M---- M---- had made too deep an impression on me; nothing
could possibly obliterate it except the all-powerful influence of time.

In my ridiculous position I was sorely tempted to complain to Countess
S----; but I am happy to say I was prudent enough not to cross the
threshold of her door. At last I bethought myself that the giddy nun was
certainly labouring under constant dread, knowing that I had in my
possession her two letters, with which I could ruin her reputation and
cause the greatest injury to the convent, and I sent them back to her
with the following note, after I had kept them ten days:

"I can assure you, madam, that it was owing only to forgetfulness that I
did not return your two letters which you will find enclosed. I have