the Indies at your feet;
I fancy you reclining either on the rarest flowers, or on the
softest tissues, and all the splendor of the world seems hardly
worthy of you, for whom I would I could command the harmony and
the light that are given out by the harps of seraphs and the stars
of heaven! Alas! a poor, studious poet, I offer you in words
treasures I cannot bestow; I can only give you my heart, in which
you reign for ever. I have nothing else. But are there no
treasures in eternal gratitude, in a smile whose expressions will
perpetually vary with perennial happiness, under the constant
eagerness of my devotion to guess the wishes of your loving soul?
Has not one celestial glance given us assurance of always
understanding each other?

"I have a prayer now to be said to God every night--a prayer full
of you: 'Let my Pauline be happy!' And will you fill all my days
as you now fill my heart?

"Farewell, I can but trust you to God alone!"

III

"Pauline! tell me if I can in any way have displeased you
yesterday? Throw off the pride of heart which inflicts on me the
secret tortures that can be caused by one we love. Scold me if you
will! Since yesterday, a vague, unutterable dread of having
offended you pours grief on the life of feeling which you had made
so sweet and so rich. The lightest veil that comes between two
souls sometimes grows to be a brazen wall. There are no venial
crimes in love! If you have the very spirit of that noble
sentiment, you must feel all its pangs, and we must be unceasingly
careful not to fret each other by some heedless word.

"No doubt, my beloved treasure, if there is any fault, it is in
me. I cannot pride myself in the belief that I understand a
woman's heart, in all the expansion of its tenderness, all the
grace of its devotedness; but I will always endeavor to appreciate
the value of what you vouchsafe to show me of the secrets of
yours.

"Speak to me! Answer me soon! The melancholy into which we are
thrown by the idea of a wrong done is frightful; it casts a shroud
over life, and doubts on everything.

"I spent this morning sitting on the bank by the sunken road,
gazing at the turrets of Villenoix, not daring to go to our hedge.
If you could imagine all I saw in my soul! What gloomy visions
passed before me under the gray sky, whose cold sheen added to my
dreary