ome, intelligent blue eyes--my ideal's eyes are black,
full of sadness and fire, not the soft, troubadour eye with long
drooping lids--no! My ideal's glance has none of the languishing
tenderness of romance, but is proud, powerful, penetrating, the look of
a thinker, of a great mind yielding to the influence of love, the gaze
of a hero disarmed by passion!

My lover is tall and slender--my ideal is only a head taller than myself
... Ah! I know you are laughing at me, Valentine! Well! I sometimes
laugh at myself....

My lover is frankness personified--my ideal is not a sly knave, but he
is mysterious; he never utters his thoughts, but lets you divine, or
rather he speaks to a responsive sentiment in your own bosom.

My lover is what men call "A good fellow," you are intimate with him in
twenty-four hours.

My ideal is by no means "a good fellow," and although he inspires
confidence and respect, you are never at ease in his presence, there is
a graceful dignity in his carriage, an imposing gentleness in his
manner, that always inspires a kind of fear, a pleasing awe.

You remember, Valentine, when we were very young girls how we were wont
to ask each other, in reading the annals of the past, what situations
would have pleased us, what parts we would have liked to play, what
great emotions we would have wished to experience; and how you pityingly
laughed at my odd taste.

My dream,_par excellence_, was to die of fear; I never envied with you
the famed heroines, the sublime shepherdesses who saved their country. I
envied the timid Esther fainting in the arms of her women at the fierce
tones of Ahasuerus, and restored to consciousness by the same voice
musically whispering the fondest words ever inspired by a royal love.

I also admired Semele, dying of fear and admiration at the frowns of a
wrathful Jove, but her least of all, because I am terrified in a
thunderstorm.

Well, I am still the same--to love tremblingly is my fondest dream; I do
not say, like pretty Madame de S., that I can only be captivated by a
man with the passions of a tiger and the manners of a diplomate, I only
declare that I cannot understand love without fear.

And yet my lover does not inspire me with the least fear, and against
all reasoning, I mistrust a love that so little resembles the love I
imagined.

The strangest doubts trouble me. When Roger speaks to me tenderly; when
he lovingly calls me his dear Irene, I am troubled, alarmed--I