delicate ideas than from the mysterious working of the human
intellect. It is characteristic of man to purify and refine everything
that he lays up in the treasury of his thoughts. What human faces,
what monuments of the dead are not made more beautiful than actual
nature in the artistic representation? The soul of the reader assists
in this conspiracy against the truth, either by means of the profound
silence which it enjoys in reading or by the fire of mental conception
with which it is agitated or by the clearness with which imagery is
reflected in the mirror of the understanding. Who has not seen on
reading the _Confessions_ of Jean-Jacques, that Madame de Warens is
described as much prettier than she ever was in actual life? It might
almost be said that our souls dwell with delight upon the figures
which they had met in a former existence, under fairer skies; that
they accept the creations of another soul only as wings on which they
may soar into space; features the most delicate they bring to
perfection by making them their own; and the most poetic expression
which appears in the imagery of an author brings forth still more
ethereal imagery in the mind of a reader. To read is to join with the
writer in a creative act. The mystery of the transubstantiation of
ideas, originates perhaps in the instinctive consciousness that we
have of a vocation loftier than our present destiny. Or, is it based
on the lost tradition of a former life? What must that life have been,
if this slight residuum of memory offers us such volumes of delight?

Moreover, in reading plays and romances, woman, a creature much more
susceptible than we are to excitement, experiences the most violent
transport. She creates for herself an ideal existence beside which all
reality grows pale; she at once attempts to realize this voluptuous
life, to take to herself the magic which she sees in it. And, without
knowing it, she passes from spirit to letter and from soul to sense.