timid
glance?

"You have given me incredible self-confidence and audacity. I can
dare all things now. I came back to Blois in deep dejection. Five
years of study in the heart of Paris had made me look on the world
as a prison. I had conceived of vast schemes, and dared not speak
of them. Fame seemed to me a prize for charlatans, to which a
really noble spirit should not stoop. Thus, my ideas could only
make their way by the assistance of a man bold enough to mount the
platform of the press, and to harangue loudly the simpletons he
scorns. This kind of courage I have not. I ploughed my way on,
crushed by the verdict of the crowd, in despair at never making it
hear me. I was at once too humble and too lofty! I swallowed my
thoughts as other men swallow humiliations. I had even come to
despise knowledge, blaming it for yielding no real happiness.

"But since yesterday I am wholly changed. For your sake I now
covet every palm of glory, every triumph of success. When I lay my
head on your knees, I could wish to attract to you the eyes of the
whole world, just as I long to concentrate in my love every idea,
every power that is in me. The most splendid celebrity is a
possession that genius alone can create. Well, I can, at my will,
make for you a bed of laurels. And if the silent ovation paid to
science is not all you desire, I have within me the sword of the
Word; I could run in the path of honor and ambition where others
only crawl.

"Command me, Pauline; I will be whatever you will. My iron will
can do anything--I am loved! Armed with that thought, ought not a
man to sweep everything before him? The man who wants all can do
all. If you are the prize of success, I enter the lists to-morrow.
To win such a look as that you bestowed on me, I would leap the
deepest abyss. Through you I understand the fabulous achievements
of chivalry and the most fantastic tales of the _Arabian Nights_.
I can believe now in the most fantastic excesses of love, and in
the success of a prisoner's wildest attempt to recover his
liberty. You have aroused the thousand virtues that lay dormant
within me--patience, resignation, all the powers of my heart, all
the strength of my soul. I live by you and--heavenly thought!--for
you. Everything now has a meaning for me in life. I understand
everything, even the vanities of wealth.

"I find myself shedding all the pearls of