the heavens, the
moon bathed with its silvery light the tops of the trees, through which a
monotonous breeze softly rustled. After gazing at this melancholy picture
of sleeping nature, the poet smiled disdainfully, and said to himself
"This comedy must end. I can not waste my life thus. Doubtless, glory is
a dream as well as love; to pass the night idiotically gazing at the moon
and stars is, after all, as reasonable as to grow pale over a work
destined to live a day, a year, or a century! for what renown lasts
longer than that? If I were really loved, I should not regret those
wasted hours; but is it true that I am loved? There are moments when I
recover my coolness and clearness of mind, a degree of self possession
incompatible with the enthusiasm of genuine passion; at other times, it
is true, a sudden agitation renders me powerless and leaves me as weak as
a child. Oh, yes, I love her in a strange manner; the sentiment that I
feel for her has become a study of the mind as well as an emotion of the
heart, and that is what gives it its despotic tenacity; for a material
impression weakens and gradually dies out, but when an energetic
intelligence is brought to bear upon it, it becomes desperate. I should
be wrong to complain. Passion, a passive sentiment! This word has a
contradictory meaning for me. I am a lover as Napoleon was an emperor:
nobody forced the crown upon him, he took it and crowned himself with his
own hand. If my crown happens to be a thorny one, whom can I accuse? Did
not my brow crave it?

"I have loved this woman of my own choosing, above all others; the choice
made, I have worked at my love as I would at a cherished poem; it has
been the subject of all my meditations, the fairy of all my dreams, for
more than a year. I have not had a thought in which I have not paid her
homage. I have devoted my talents to her; it seemed to me that by loving
and perpetually contemplating her image, I might at last become worthy of
painting it. I was conscious of a grand future, if only she had
understood me; I often thought of Raphael and his own Fornarina. There is
a throne vacant in poetry; I had dreamed of this throne in order to lay
it at Clemence's feet. Oh! although this may never be more than a dream,
this dream has given me hours of incomparable happiness! I should be
ungrateful to deny it.

"And yet this love is only a fictitious sentiment; I realize it today. It
is not with her that I am in love, it is wi