friends, Andre and Paul.
If, however, we were separated we continually and slyly exchanged notes
written in a cipher to which we alone had the key.

These letters were always love confidences: "I have seen her to-day; she
wore a blue dress trimmed with gray fur, and she had a lark's wing on
her turban, etc."--For we had chosen sweethearts who became the subject
of our very poetical prattle.

Something of the ridiculous and whimsical invariably marks this
transition age in a boy's life, and for that reason I have thought it
worth while to transcribe the boyish note.

Before going further I wish to say that my transition periods have
lasted longer than do those of the majority of men, and during them I
have been carried from one extreme to another; and, too they have caused
me to touch all the perilous rocks along life's way,--I am also fully
conscious of the fact that until almost my twenty-fifth year I had
eccentric and absurd manners. . . .

But now I will continue with my confidences respecting our three love
affairs.

Andre was ardently in love with a young lady almost six years older than
himself who had already been introduced into society,--I believe that
his affair was a case of real and deep affection.

I had chosen Jeanne for my sweetheart, and my two friends were the only
beings who knew my secret. To do as they did, although I considered it a
little silly, I wrote her name in cipher on the covers of my copy-books;
in every way and manner I sought to persuade myself of the ardor of
my passion, but I am bound to admit that the whole thing was a little
artificial, for the amusing coquetry that Jeanne and I had indulged
in early in our acquaintance had developed into a true and great
friendship, a hereditary friendship I may call it, a continuation of
that felt by our ancestors long before our birth. No, my first real
love, of which I will soon speak, was for a being seen in a dream.

As for Paul--alas! His heart affair was very shocking to me, for it did
particular violence to the ideas that I then had. He was in love with
a little shop-girl who worked in a perfumery store, and on his Sunday
holidays he gazed at her through the show-case window. It is true that
she was named Stella or Olympia, and that raised her somewhat in my
esteem; and, too, Paul took pains to surround his love with an ethereal
and poetic atmosphere in order to make it more acceptable to us. At the
bottom of his cipher notes he cons