s. My beloved soul, I look for a line, a word that may restore
my peace of mind. Let me know whether I really grieved my Pauline,
or whether some uncertain expression of her countenance misled me.
I could not bear to have to reproach myself after a whole life of
happiness, for ever having met you without a smile of love, a
honeyed word. To grieve the woman I love--Pauline, I should count
it a crime. Tell me the truth, do not put me off with some
magnanimous subterfuge, but forgive me without cruelty."

FRAGMENT.

"Is so perfect an attachment happiness? Yes, for years of
suffering would not pay for an hour of love.

"Yesterday, your sadness, as I suppose, passed into my soul as
swiftly as a shadow falls. Were you sad or suffering? I was
wretched. Whence came my distress? Write to me at once. Why did I
not know it? We are not yet completely one in mind. At two
leagues' distance or at a thousand I ought to feel your pain and
sorrows. I shall not believe that I love you till my life is so
bound up with yours that our life is one, till our hearts, our
thoughts are one. I must be where you are, see what you feel, feel
what you feel, be with you in thought. Did not I know, at once,
that your carriage had been overthrown and you were bruised? But
on that day I had been with you, I had never left you, I could see
you. When my uncle asked me what made me turn so pale, I answered
at once, 'Mademoiselle de Villenoix had has a fall.'

"Why, then, yesterday, did I fail to read your soul? Did you wish
to hide the cause of your grief? However, I fancied I could feel
that you were arguing in my favor, though in vain, with that
dreadful Salomon, who freezes my blood. That man is not of our
heaven.

"Why do you insist that our happiness, which has no resemblance to
that of other people, should conform to the laws of the world? And
yet I delight too much in your bashfulness, your religion, your
superstitions, not to obey your lightest whim. What you do must be
right; nothing can be purer than your mind, as nothing is lovelier
than your face, which reflects your divine soul.

"I shall wait for a letter before going along the lanes to meet
the sweet hour you grant me. Oh! if you could know how the sight
of those turrets makes my heart throb when I see them edged with
light by the moon, our only confidante."

IV

"F