se of all my remedies. The cloister, the altar,
work, books,--follies! Oh, how hollow does science sound when one in
despair dashes against it a head full of passions! Do you know, young
girl, what I saw thenceforth between my book and me? You, your shade,
the image of the luminous apparition which had one day crossed the space
before me. But this image had no longer the same color; it was sombre,
funereal, gloomy as the black circle which long pursues the vision of
the imprudent man who has gazed intently at the sun.

"Unable to rid myself of it, since I heard your song humming ever in
my head, beheld your feet dancing always on my breviary, felt even at
night, in my dreams, your form in contact with my own, I desired to see
you again, to touch you, to know who you were, to see whether I should
really find you like the ideal image which I had retained of you, to
shatter my dream, perchance, with reality. At all events, I hoped that
a new impression would efface the first, and the first had become
insupportable. I sought you. I saw you once more. Calamity! When I had
seen you twice, I wanted to see you a thousand times, I wanted to see
you always. Then--how stop myself on that slope of hell?--then I no
longer belonged to myself. The other end of the thread which the demon
had attached to my wings he had fastened to his foot. I became vagrant
and wandering like yourself. I waited for you under porches, I stood on
the lookout for you at the street corners, I watched for you from the
summit of my tower. Every evening I returned to myself more charmed,
more despairing, more bewitched, more lost!

"I had learned who you were; an Egyptian, Bohemian, gypsy, zingara. How
could I doubt the magic? Listen. I hoped that a trial would free me from
the charm. A witch enchanted Bruno d'Ast; he had her burned, and was
cured. I knew it. I wanted to try the remedy. First I tried to have you
forbidden the square in front of Notre-Dame, hoping to forget you if you
returned no more. You paid no heed to it. You returned. Then the idea of
abducting you occurred to me. One night I made the attempt. There were
two of us. We already had you in our power, when that miserable officer
came up. He delivered you. Thus did he begin your unhappiness, mine, and
his own. Finally, no longer knowing what to do, and what was to become
of me, I denounced you to the official.

"I thought that I should be cured like Bruno d'Ast. I also had a
confused idea th