Canalis.

Mademoiselle,--The admiration for fine works (allowing that my
books are such) implies something so lofty and sincere as to
protect you from all light jesting, and to justify before the
sternest judge the step you have taken in writing to me.

But first I must thank you for the pleasure which such proofs of
sympathy afford, even though we may not merit them,--for the maker
of verses and the true poet are equally certain of the intrinsic
worth of their writings,--so readily does self-esteem lend itself
to praise. The best proof of friendship that I can give to an
unknown lady in exchange for a faith which allays the sting of
criticism, is to share with her the harvest of my own experience,
even at the risk of dispelling her most vivid illusions.

Mademoiselle, the noblest adornment of a young girl is the flower
of a pure and saintly and irreproachable life. Are you alone in
the world? If you are, there is no need to say more. But if you
have a family, a father or a mother, think of all the sorrow that
might come to them from such a letter as yours addressed to a poet
of whom you know nothing personally. All writers are not angels;
they have many defects. Some are frivolous, heedless, foppish,
ambitious, dissipated; and, believe me, no matter how imposing
innocence may be, how chivalrous a poet is, you will meet with
many a degenerate troubadour in Paris ready to cultivate your
affection only to betray it. By such a man your letter would be
interpreted otherwise than it is by me. He would see a thought
that is not in it, which you, in your innocence, have not
suspected. There are as many natures as there are writers. I am
deeply flattered that you have judged me capable of understanding
you; but had you, perchance, fallen upon a hypocrite, a scoffer,
one whose books may be melancholy but whose life is a perpetual
carnival, you would have found as the result of your generous
imprudence an evil-minded man, the frequenter of green-rooms,
perhaps a hero of some gay resort. In the bower of clematis where
you dream of poets, can you smell the odor of the cigar which
drives all poetry from the manuscript?

But let us look still further. How could the dreamy, solitary life
you lead, doubtless by the sea-shore, interest a poet, whose
mission it is to imagine all, and to paint all? What reality can
equal imagination? The young girls of the po