failed, the
pace at which Star goes would easily baffle any pertinacious pursuit. I
often stay for two or three days at this delicious retreat. My uncle
delights in coming there from time to time to take his madeira.

In short, after the little adventures we have lately gone through, we
are now leading a very pleasant existence.

You can see what a simple matter it is.

My famous system, you will tell me, has come to grief. Here I am, all
forlorn, among the ruins of my harem, running my head against
impossibilities opposed to our laws, morals, and conventionalities, with
my last sultana leaning on my arm; here I am, like some little St.
John,[B] reduced to shady expedients in order to get a minute's
interview with my mistress, imprisoned in her tower. I am trembling
between our caresses, you will say, lest a commissary of police should
come to cut the golden thread upon which my remaining blisses hang, and
force me by legal authority to give back Kondje-Gul to her cruel mother.

[Footnote B: Referring to a familiar French nursery-legend similar
to that of Santa Claus.--_Trans._]

Well, my dear friend, I will answer you very briefly, I am in love! Yes,
I am in love! These words are a reply, I think, to everything; although
I must own that fear of the commissary, which certainly does threaten my
felicity, has considerably humbled my Oriental pride--I am in love! I
have burnt my essay for the Academy.

Well, then, I have abjured my polygamy. What more can I say to you?

To-day I must confide to you a most valuable discovery I have made; for
I beg you to believe that love is not, as so many foolish people
imagine, an extinguisher to the fire of the human intellect. On the
contrary, it stimulates the perceptions; and an enthusiastic lover, who
is familiar with the elements of science, can extend therein his field
of observations quite as easily as persons whose hearts are whole.

As an example of this, then, I have just been realising the beauty of a
charming phenomenon of nature--a most ordinary one, and yet one which so
far has remained, I think, completely unobserved. I refer to the spring!

As a great artist, you of course know, as well as any one in the world,
that this is the season which leads from the winter to the summer; but
what I feel sure you don't know is the full charm of this transitory
period, in which the whole forest awakens, in which the bushes sprout,
and the young birds twitter in