look for
him. After six months I thought I had found him. I gave him my heart, I
received his, we loved each other fondly. But for the last four months we
have been separated, and during the whole time I have only had one letter
from him. Yet I must not blame him, for I know he cannot help it. Such,
is my sorry fate: I can neither hear from him nor write to him:"

This story was a confirmation of a theory of mine namely, that the most
important events in our lives proceed often from the most trifling
causes. My epistle was nothing better than a number of lines of poetry
more or less well written, and the being I had delineated was certainly
not to be found, as he surpassed by far all human perfections, but a
woman's heart travels so quickly and so far! Mdlle. X. C. V. took the
thing literally, and fell in love with a chimera of goodness, and then
was fain to turn this into a real lover, not thinking of the vast
difference between the ideal and the real. For all that, when she thought
that she had found the original of my fancy portrait, she had no
difficulty in endowing him with all the good qualities I had pictured. Of
course Mdlle. X. C. V. would have fallen in love if I had never written
her a letter in verse, but she would have done so in a different manner,
and probably with different results.

As soon as dinner was served we were summoned to do justice to the choice
fish which M. de la Popeliniere had provided. Madame X. C. V. a
narrowminded Greek, was naturally bigoted and superstitious. In the mind
of a silly woman the idea of an alliance between the most opposite of
beings, God and the Devil, seems quite natural. A priest had told her
that, since she had converted her husband, her salvation was secure, for
the Scriptures solemnly promised a soul for a soul to every one who would
lead a heretic or a heathen within the fold of the church. And as Madame
X. C. V. had converted her husband, she felt no anxiety about the life of
the world to come, as she had done all that was necessary. However, she
ate fish on the days appointed; the reason being that she preferred it to
flesh.

Dinner over, I returned to the lady's bedside, and there stayed till
nearly nine o'clock, keeping my passions well under control all the time.
I was foppish enough to think that her feelings were as lively as mine,
and I did not care to shew myself less self-restrained than she, though I
knew then, as I know now, that this was a false lin