cious of the warmth upon my lips, repenting not, and following with
my eyes the woman who had come down to me from heaven. Sick with the
first fever of the heart I wandered through the rooms, unable to find
mine Unknown, until at last I went home to bed, another man.

A new soul, a soul with rainbow wings, had burst its chrysalis.
Descending from the azure wastes where I had long admired her, my star
had come to me a woman, with undiminished lustre and purity. I loved,
knowing naught of love. How strange a thing, this first irruption of the
keenest human emotion in the heart of a man! I had seen pretty women in
other places, but none had made the slightest impression upon me.
Can there be an appointed hour, a conjunction of stars, a union of
circumstances, a certain woman among all others to awaken an exclusive
passion at the period of life when love includes the whole sex?

The thought that my Elect lived in Touraine made the air I breathed
delicious; the blue of the sky seemed bluer than I had ever yet seen it.
I raved internally, but externally I was seriously ill, and my mother
had fears, not unmingled with remorse. Like animals who know when danger
is near, I hid myself away in the garden to think of the kiss that I
had stolen. A few days after this memorable ball my mother attributed my
neglect of study, my indifference to her tyrannical looks and sarcasms,
and my gloomy behavior to the condition of my health. The country, that
perpetual remedy for ills that doctors cannot cure, seemed to her the
best means of bringing me out of my apathy. She decided that I should
spend a few weeks at Frapesle, a chateau on the Indre midway between
Montbazon and Azay-le-Rideau, which belonged to a friend of hers, to
whom, no doubt, she gave private instructions.

By the day when I thus for the first time gained my liberty I had swum
so vigorously in Love's ocean that I had well-nigh crossed it. I knew
nothing of mine unknown lady, neither her name, nor where to find
her; to whom, indeed, could I speak of her? My sensitive nature so
exaggerated the inexplicable fears which beset all youthful hearts at
the first approach of love that I began with the melancholy which often
ends a hopeless passion. I asked nothing better than to roam about the
country, to come and go and live in the fields. With the courage of
a child that fears no failure, in which there is something really
chivalrous, I determined to search every chateau in Toura