to have any feeling for the beautiful.

"'Tuesday is very slow of coming for my impatient mind! On
Tuesday I shall be with you for several hours. Ah! when it comes I
will try to think that the hours are months, that it will be so
always. I am living in hope of that morning now, as I shall live
upon the memory of it afterwards. Hope is memory that craves; and
recollection, memory sated. What a beautiful life within life
thought makes for us in this way!

"'Sometimes I dream of inventing new ways of tenderness all my
own, a secret which no other woman shall guess. A cold sweat
breaks out over me at the thought that something may happen to
prevent this morning. Oh, I would break with _him_ for good, if
need was, but nothing here could possibly interfere; it would be
from your side. Perhaps you may decide to go out, perhaps to go to
see some other woman. Oh! spare me this Tuesday for pity's sake.
If you take it from me, Charles, you do not know what _he_ will
suffer; I should drive him wild. But even if you do not want me,
or you are going out, let me come, all the same, to be with you
while you dress; only to see you, I ask no more than that; only to
show you that I love you without a thought of self.

"'Since you gave me leave to love you, for you gave me leave,
since I am yours; since that day I loved and love you with the
whole strength of my soul; and I shall love you for ever, for once
having loved _you_, no one could, no one ought to love another.
And, you see, when those eyes that ask nothing but to see you are
upon you, you will feel that in your Claudine there is a something
divine, called into existence by you.

"'Alas! with you I can never play the coquette. I am like a
mother with her child; I endure anything from you; I, that was
once so imperious and proud. I have made dukes and princes fetch
and carry for me; aides-de-camp, worth more than all the court of
Charles X. put together, have done my errands, yet I am treating
you as my spoilt child. But where is the use of coquetry? It would
be pure waste. And yet, monsieur, for want of coquetry I shall
never inspire love in you. I know it; I feel it; yet I do as
before, feeling a power that I cannot withstand, thinking that
this utter self-surrender will win me the sentiment innate in all
men (so _he_ tells me) for the thing that belongs to them.

"_Wednesday_.

"'Ah! how darkly