key and go. In the course of the day
you shall have a letter, and my orders, for you know you are to obey
blindly."

"Yes; but if I should already ask for something?"

"What?"

"Let me have that key."

"What you ask is a thing I have never done for any one."

"Well, do it for me, for I swear to you that I don't love you as the
others have loved you."

"Well, keep it; but it only depends on me to make it useless to you,
after all."

"How?"

"There are bolts on the door."

"Wretch!"

"I will have them taken off."

"You love, then, a little?"

"I don't know how it is, but it seems to me as if I do! Now, go; I can't
keep my eyes open."

I held her in my arms for a few seconds and then went.

The streets were empty, the great city was still asleep, a sweet
freshness circulated in the streets that a few hours later would be
filled with the noise of men. It seemed to me as if this sleeping
city belonged to me; I searched my memory for the names of those whose
happiness I had once envied; and I could not recall one without finding
myself the happier.

To be loved by a pure young girl, to be the first to reveal to her the
strange mystery of love, is indeed a great happiness, but it is the
simplest thing in the world. To take captive a heart which has had no
experience of attack, is to enter an unfortified and ungarrisoned city.
Education, family feeling, the sense of duty, the family, are strong
sentinels, but there are no sentinels so vigilant as not to be deceived
by a girl of sixteen to whom nature, by the voice of the man she loves,
gives the first counsels of love, all the more ardent because they seem
so pure.

The more a girl believes in goodness, the more easily will she give way,
if not to her lover, at least to love, for being without mistrust she
is without force, and to win her love is a triumph that can be gained
by any young man of five-and-twenty. See how young girls are watched
and guarded! The walls of convents are not high enough, mothers have
no locks strong enough, religion has no duties constant enough, to shut
these charming birds in their cages, cages not even strewn with flowers.
Then how surely must they desire the world which is hidden from them,
how surely must they find it tempting, how surely must they listen to
the first voice which comes to tell its secrets through their bars, and
bless the hand which is the first to raise a corner of the mysterious
veil!

But to be reall