return to
Paris. I know a way to settle everything to the advantage of our
young lover,--simply by the transmission of the father-in-law's
title, and no one, I think, can more readily obtain that favor
than Ernest, both on account of his own services and the influence
which you and I and the duke can exert for him. With his tastes,
Ernest, who of course will step into my office when I go to Baden,
will be perfectly happy in Paris with twenty-five thousand francs
a year, a permanent place, and a wife--luckless fellow!

Ah, dearest, how I long for the rue de Grenelle! Fifteen days of
absence! when they do not kill love, they revive all the ardor of
its earlier days, and you know, better than I, perhaps, the
reasons that make my love eternal,--my bones will love thee in the
grave! Ah! I cannot bear this separation. If I am forced to stay
here another ten days, I shall make a flying visit of a few hours
to Paris.

Has the duke obtained for me the thing we wanted; and shall you,
my dearest life, be ordered to drink the Baden waters next year?
The billing and cooing of the "handsome disconsolate," compared
with the accents of our happy love--so true and changeless for now
ten years!--have given me a great contempt for marriage. I had
never seen the thing so near. Ah, dearest! what the world calls a
"false step" brings two beings nearer together than the law--does
it not?

The concluding idea served as a text for two pages of reminiscences and
aspirations a little too confidential for publication.

The evening before the day on which Canalis put the above epistle into
the post, Butscha, under the name of Jean Jacmin, had received a letter
from his fictitious cousin, Philoxene, and had mailed his answer, which
thus preceded the letter of the poet by about twelve hours. Terribly
anxious for the last two weeks, and wounded by Melchior's silence,
the duchess herself dictated Philoxene's letter to her cousin, and
the moment she had read the answer, rather too explicit for her
quinquagenary vanity, she sent for the banker and made close inquiries
as to the exact fortune of Monsieur Mignon. Finding herself betrayed and
abandoned for the millions, Eleonore gave way to a paroxysm of anger,
hatred, and cold vindictiveness. Philoxene knocked at the door of the
sumptuous room, and entering found her mistress with her eyes full
of tears,--so unprecedented a phenomenon in the fifteen years