e had to do all the work, and that I was good for nothing;
and all sorts of projects flitted through our minds. Sicily was far
away, but the winters are so delightful there! Genoa is very pretty
with its painted houses, its green gardens, and the Apennines in the
background! But what noise! What crowds! Among every three men on the
street, one is a monk and another a soldier. Florence is sad, it is the
Middle Ages living in the midst of modern life. How can any one endure
those grilled windows and that horrible brown color with which all the
houses are tinted?

What could we do at Rome? We were not travelling in order to forget
ourselves, much less for the sake of instruction. To the Rhine? But the
season was over, and although we did not care for the world of fashion,
still it is sad to visit its haunts when it has fled. But Spain? Too
many restrictions there; one travels like an army on the march, and may
expect everything except repose. Switzerland? Too many people go there,
and most of them are deceived as to the nature of its attractions;
but in that land are unfolded the three most beautiful colors on
God's earth: the azure of the sky, the verdure of the plains, and the
whiteness of the snows on the summits of glaciers.

"Let us go, let us go!" cried Brigitte, "let us fly away like two birds.
Let us pretend, my dear Octave, that we met each other only yesterday.
You met me at a ball, I pleased you and I love you; you tell me that
some leagues distant, in a certain little town, you loved a certain
Madame Pierson; what passed between you and her I do not know. You will
not tell me the story of your love for another! And I will whisper
to you that not long since I loved a terrible fellow who made me very
unhappy; you will reprove me and close my mouth, and we will agree never
to speak of such things."

When Brigitte spoke thus I experienced a feeling that resembled avarice;
I caught her in my arms and cried:

"Oh, God! I know not whether it is with joy or with fear that I tremble.
I am about to carry off my treasure. Die, my youth; die, all memories of
the past; die, all cares and regrets! Oh, my good, my brave Brigitte!
You have made a man out of a child. If I lose you now, I shall never
love again. Perhaps, before I knew you, another woman might have cured
me; but now you alone, of all the world, have power to destroy me or to
save me, for I bear in my heart the wound of all the evil I have done
you. I have bee