the month of
January, when my quarter's allowance from my father became due. At that
time of the year, too, I was in the habit of receiving some little
presents from a rich but severe old uncle, and from some good and
prudent old aunts. By means of all these resources, I hoped to collect
a sum of six or eight hundred francs, which would be sufficient to keep
me in Paris for a few months. Privations would be no trial to my
vanity, for my life consisted only in my love. All the riches of this
world could, in my eyes, only have served to purchase for me the
portion of the day that I was to pass with her.

The weary days of expectation were filled with thoughts of her. We
devoted to each other every hour of our time. In the morning, on
waking, she retired to her room to write to me, and at the same instant
I, too, was writing to her; our pages and our thoughts crossed on the
road by every post, questioning, answering, and mingling without a
day's interruption. There were thus in reality for us only a few hours'
absence; in the evening and at night. But even these I consecrated to
her: I was surrounded with her letters,--they lay open upon the table,
my bed was strewn with them; I learned them by heart. I often repeated
to myself the most affecting and impassioned passages, adding in fancy
her voice, her gesture, her tone, her look; I would answer her, and
thus succeed in producing such a complete delusion of her real
presence, that I felt impatient and annoyed when I was summoned to
meals, or interrupted by visitors; at these times it seemed as though
she were torn from me, or driven away from my room. In my long rambles
on the mountains, or in those misty plains without an horizon which
border the Saone, I always took her last letter with me, and would sit
on the rocks, or on the edge of the water, amid the ice and snow, to
read it over and over again. Each time I fancied I discovered some word
or expression that had escaped my notice before. I remember that I
always instinctively directed my course towards the north, as if each
step I took in the direction of Paris brought me nearer to her, and
diminished the cruel distance that separated us. Sometimes I went very
far on the Paris road under this impression, and when it was time to
return, I had always a severe struggle with myself. I felt sorrowful,
and would often look back towards that point of the horizon where she
dwelt, and walk slowly and heavily home. Oh, how I en