n without being
conscious of the irregularity of words too slow to express his thoughts.
He must have been compelled to copy these chaotic attempts, for the
lines often ran into each other; but he was also afraid perhaps of not
having sufficiently disguised his feelings, and at first, at any rate,
he had probably written his love-letters twice over.

It required all the fervency of my devotion to his memory, and the sort
of fanaticism which comes of such a task, to enable me to divine
and restore the meaning of the five letters that here follow. These
documents, preserved by me with pious care, are the only material
evidence of his overmastering passion. Mademoiselle de Villenoix had no
doubt destroyed the real letters that she received, eloquent witnesses
to the delirium she inspired.

The first of these papers, evidently a rough sketch, betrays by its
style and by its length the many emendations, the heartfelt alarms,
the innumerable terrors caused by a desire to please; the changes of
expression and the hesitation between the whirl of ideas that beset a
man as he indites his first love-letter--a letter he never will forget,
each line the result of a reverie, each word the subject of long
cogitation, while the most unbridled passion known to man feels the
necessity of the most reserved utterance, and like a giant stooping to
enter a hovel, speaks humbly and low, so as not to alarm a girl's soul.

No antiquary ever handled his palimpsests with greater respect than
I showed in reconstructing these mutilated documents of such joy and
suffering as must always be sacred to those who have known similar joy
and grief.

I

"Mademoiselle, when you have read this letter, if you ever should
read it, my life will be in your hands, for I love you; and to me,
the hope of being loved is life. Others, perhaps, ere now, have,
in speaking of themselves, misused the words I must employ to
depict the state of my soul; yet, I beseech you to believe in the
truth of my expressions; though weak, they are sincere. Perhaps I
ought not thus to proclaim my love. Indeed, my heart counseled me
to wait in silence till my passion should touch you, that I might
the better conceal it if its silent demonstrations should
displease you; or till I could express it even more delicately
than in words if I found favor in your eyes. However, after having
listened for long to the coy fears tha