of good omen for my
hopes of fame; but I had not shown it to my mother, whose chaste and
pious purity of mind might have taken alarm at the more antique than
Christian voluptuousness of some of my elegies. I hoped that the simple
grace and the winged enthusiasm of my poetry might please some
intelligent publisher, who would buy my volume, or at least consent to
print it at his own expense; and that the public taste, attracted by
the novelty of a style springing from the heart, and nursed in the
woods, would, perhaps, confer on me a humble fortune and a name.

LIX.

I had no need to look for a lodging in Paris. One of my friends, the
young Count de V----, who had just returned from his travels, was to
spend the winter and the following spring there, and had offered to
share with me a little _entresol_ that he occupied, over the rooms of
the concierge in the magnificent hotel (since pulled down) of the
Marechal de Richelieu, in the Rue Neuve St. Augustin. The Count de
V----, with whom I was in almost daily correspondence, knew all. I had
given him a letter of introduction to Julie, that he might know the
soul of my soul, and that he might understand, if not my delirium, at
least my adoration for that woman. At first sight, he comprehended and
almost shared my enthusiasm. In his letters, he always alluded, with
tender pity and respect, to that fair vision of melancholy, which
seemed hovering between life and death, and only detained on earth, he
said, by the ineffable love she bore to me. He always spoke to me of
her as of a heavenly gift, sent to my eyes and heart, and which would
raise me above human nature as long as I remained enveloped in her
radiance. V----, who was persuaded of the holy and superhuman nature of
our attachment, considered it as a virtue, and felt no repugnance to
being the mediator and confidant of our love. Julie, on her part, spoke
of V---- as the only friend she considered worthy of me, and for whom
she would have wished to increase my friendship, instead of detracting
from it by a mean jealousy of the heart. Both urged me to come to
Paris, but V----, alone, knew the secret motives, and the strictly
material impossibility, which had detained me till then. Spite of his
devoted friendship, of which he gave me, until his death, so many
proofs during the troubles of my life, it was not in his power at that
time to remove the obstacles that arrested me. His mother had exhausted
her means to