e. A new danger threatens me; I escape
from a furious prince, to be ensnared by a delirious poet. I went away
leaving M. de Meilhan gracious, gallant, but reasonable; I return to
find him presuming, passionate, foolish. It makes me think that absence
increases my attractiveness, and separation clothes me with new charms.

This devotion is annoying, and I am determined to nip it in the bud; it
fills me with a horrible dread that in no way resembles the charming
fear I have dreamed of. The young poet takes a serious view of the
flattery I bestowed upon him only in order to discover what his friend
had written about me; he has persuaded himself that I love him, and I
despair of being able to dispel the foolish notion.

I have uselessly assumed the furious air of an angry Minerva, the
majestic deportment of the Queen of England opening Parliament, the
prudish, affected behavior of a school-mistress on promenade; all this
only incites his hopes. If it were love it might be seductive and
dangerous, but it is nothing more than magnetism.... You may laugh, but
it is surely this and nothing else; he acts as if he were under some
spell of fascination; he looks at me in a malevolent way that he thinks
irresistible.... But I find it unendurable. I shall end by frankly
telling him that in point of magnetism I am no longer free ... "that I
love another," as the vaudeville says, and if he asks who is this other,
I shall smilingly tell him, "it is the famous disciple of Mesmer, Dr.
Dupotet."

Yesterday his foolish behavior was very near causing my death. Alarmed
by an embarrassing tete-a-tete in the midst of an old castle we were
visiting, I mounted the window-sill in one of the towers to call Madame
Taverneau, whom I saw at the foot of the hill; the stone on which I
stood gave way, and if M. de Meilhan had not shown great presence of
mind and caught me, I would have fallen down a precipice forty feet
deep! Instant death would have been the result. Oh! how frightened I
was! I tremble yet. My terror was so great that I would have fainted if
I had had a little more confidence; but another fear made me recover
from this. Fortunately I am going away from here, and this trifling will
be over.

Yes, certainly I will accompany you to Geneva. Why can't we go as far as
Lake Como? What a charming trip to take, and what comfort we will enjoy
in my nice carriage! You must know that my travelling-carriage is a
wonder; it is being entirely renov