ations of
youth, who have seized on all the chimeras with two white pinions, the
nightmare fancies at the disposal of a fervid imagination, can realize
the horrors that seized upon Gaston de Nueil when he had reason to
suppose that his ultimatum was in Mme. de Beauseant's hands. He saw the
Vicomtesse, wholly untouched, laughing at his letter and his love, as
those can laugh who have ceased to believe in love. He could have wished
to have his letter back again. It was an absurd letter. There were a
thousand and one things, now that he came to think of it, that he might
have said, things infinitely better and more moving than those stilted
phrases of his, those accursed, sophisticated, pretentious, fine-spun
phrases, though, luckily, the punctuation had been pretty bad and the
lines shockingly crooked. He tried not to think, not to feel; but he
felt and thought, and was wretched. If he had been thirty years old, he
might have got drunk, but the innocence of three-and-twenty knew
nothing of the resources of opium nor of the expedients of advanced
civilization. Nor had he at hand one of those good friends of the
Parisian pattern who understand so well how to say _Poete, non dolet!_
by producing a bottle of champagne, or alleviate the agony of suspense
by carrying you off somewhere to make a night of it. Capital fellows
are they, always in low water when you are in funds, always off to some
watering-place when you go to look them up, always with some bad bargain
in horse-flesh to sell you; it is true, that when you want to borrow of
them, they have always just lost their last louis at play; but in all
other respects they are the best fellows on earth, always ready to
embark with you on one of the steep down-grades where you lose your
time, your soul, and your life!

At length M. de Nueil received a missive through the instrumentality of
Jacques, a letter that bore the arms of Burgundy on the scented seal, a
letter written on vellum notepaper.

He rushed away at once to lock himself in, and read and re-read _her_
letter:--

"You are punishing me very severely, monsieur, both for the
friendliness of my effort to spare you a rebuff, and for the
attraction which intellect always has for me. I put confidence in
the generosity of youth, and you have disappointed me. And yet, if
I did not speak unreservedly (which would have been perfectly
ridiculous), at any rate I spoke frankly of my position, so that
you might