English," said the Marquis, with a sigh;
and as the carriage now entered Paris, he pleaded the excuse of an
engagement, bade his friend goodby, and went his way musing through the
crowded streets.

CHAPTER VIII.

LETTER FROM ISAURA CICOGNA TO MADAME DE GRANTMESNIL.

VILLA D'-----, A------.

I can never express to you, my beloved Eulalie, the strange charm which
a letter from you throws over my poor little lonely world for days after
it is received. There is always in it something that comforts, something
that sustains, but also a something that troubles and disquiets me.
I suppose Goethe is right, "that it is the property of true genius to
disturb all settled ideas," in order, no doubt, to lift them into a
higher level when they settle down again.

Your sketch of the new work you are meditating amid the orange groves of
Provence interests me intensely; yet, do you forgive me when I add
that the interest is not without terror? I do not find myself able
to comprehend how, amid those lovely scenes of Nature, your mind
voluntarily surrounds itself with images of pain and discord. I stand in
awe of the calm with which you subject to your analysis the infirmities
of reason and the tumults of passion. And all those laws of the social
state which seem to me so fixed and immovable you treat with so quiet
a scorn, as if they were but the gossamer threads which a touch of your
slight woman's hand could brush away. But I cannot venture to discuss
such subjects with you. It is only the skilled enchanter who can stand
safely in the magic circle, and compel the spirits that he summons, even
if they are evil, to minister to ends in which he foresees a good.

We continue to live here very quietly, and I do not as yet feel the
worse for the colder climate. Indeed, my wonderful doctor, who was
recommended to me as American, but is in reality English, assures me
that a single winter spent here under his care will suffice for my
complete re-establishment. Yet that career, to the training for which so
many years have been devoted, does not seem to me so alluring as it once
did.

I have much to say on this subject, which I defer till I can better
collect my own thoughts on it; at present they are confused and
struggling. The great Maestro has been most gracious.

In what a radiant atmosphere his genius lives and breathes! Even in
his cynical moods, his very cynicism has in it the ring of a jocund
musi