an epistle in verse which I had addressed to her when her
mother had forbidden me the house. "This fatal letter," said she, "which
you called 'The Phoenix,' has shaped my life and may prove the cause of
my death."

I had called it the Phoenix because, after bewailing my unhappy lot, I
proceeded to predict how she would afterwards give her heart to a mortal
whose qualities would make him deserve the name of Phoenix. A hundred
lines were taken up in the description of these imaginary mental and
moral characteristics, and certainly the being who should have them all
would be right worthy of worship, for he would be rather a god than a
man.

"Alas!" said Mdlle. X. C. V., "I fell in love with this imaginary being,
and feeling certain that such an one must exist I set myself to look for
him. After six months I thought I had found him. I gave him my heart, I
received his, we loved each other fondly. But for the last four months we
have been separated, and during the whole time I have only had one letter
from him. Yet I must not blame him, for I know he cannot help it. Such,
is my sorry fate: I can neither hear from him nor write to him:"

This story was a confirmation of a theory of mine namely, that the most
important events in our lives proceed often from the most trifling
causes. My epistle was nothing better than a number of lines of poetry
more or less well written, and the being I had delineated was certainly
not to be found, as he surpassed by far all human perfections, but a
woman's heart travels so quickly and so far! Mdlle. X. C. V. took the
thing literally, and fell in love with a chimera of goodness, and then
was fain to turn this into a real lover, not thinking of the vast
difference between the ideal and the real. For all that, when she thought
that she had found the original of my fancy portrait, she had no
difficulty in endowing him with all the good qualities I had pictured. Of
course Mdlle. X. C. V. would have fallen in love if I had never written
her a letter in verse, but she would have done so in a different manner,
and probably with different results.

As soon as dinner was served we were summoned to do justice to the choice
fish which M. de la Popeliniere had provided. Madame X. C. V. a
narrowminded Greek, was naturally bigoted and superstitious. In the mind
of a silly woman the idea of an alliance between the most opposite of
beings, God and the Devil, seems quite natural. A priest had told her
that