n here?" Thereupon I gave a minute
description of Irene de Chateaudun, from the color of her hair to the
shade of her boot.

"Yes, monsieur, she was here about three o'clock, it is now five; she
was only here a few minutes--long enough to make a little purchase."

"Yes, ... I gasped out, ... I know, but I thought I saw her ... did she
not come in ... that door?"

"Yes, sir, she entered by that door and went out by the opposite one,
that one over there," said she, pointing to a door opening on New
Vivienne street.

I suppressed an oath, and rushed out of the door opening on this new
street, as if I expected to find Mlle. de Chateaudun patiently waiting
for me to join her on the pavement. My head was in such a whirl that I
had not the remotest idea of where I was going, and I wandered
recklessly through little streets that I had never heard of before--it
made no difference to me whether I ran into Scylla or Charybdis--I cared
not what became of me.

Like the fool that repeats over and over again the same words without
understanding their meaning, I kept saying: "The fiend of a woman! the
fiend of a woman!" At this moment all my love seemed turned to hate! but
when this hate had calmed down to chill despair, I began to reflect with
agonizing fear that perhaps Irene had seen me at the Odeon with those
dreadful women. I felt that I was ruined in her eyes for ever! She would
never listen to my attempt at vindication or apologies--women are so
unforgiving when a man strays for a moment from the path of propriety,
and they regard little weaknesses in the light of premeditated crimes,
too heinous for pardon--Irene would cry out with the poet:

"Tu te fais criminel pour te justifier!"

You are fortunate, my dear Edgar, in having found the woman you have
always dreamed of and hoped for; you will have all the charms of love
without its troubles; it is folly to believe that love is strengthened
by its own torments and stimulated by sorrows. A storm is only admired
by those on shore; the suffering sailors curse the raging sea and pray
for a calm.

Your letter, my dear Edgar, is filled with that calm happiness that is
the foundation of all true love; in return, I can only send you an
account of my despair. Friendship is often a union of these two
contrasts.

Enjoy your happy lot, my friend; your reputation is made. You have a
good name, an enviable and an individual philosophy, borrowed neither
from the Greeks nor the Ge