ystified,
my dear. I'll explain it all to you another time. I really only meant to
tell you that his name was Felix, and that means happy, and with the
name my good godfather gave me happiness. Yes, good things seem to come
to me as they do to you. May it last! At any rate we will hold on to the
fairies as long as we can, and if ever the wicked dragon crosses our
paths, we will stand by one another, won't we?"

"Well, I can't do much," she said, "but I'll run a needle through him,
if he means mischief."

And the offensive and defensive alliance thus ratified, we parted, each
the richer for a new friend.

In my letters to Claude I gave very full particulars of my conversations
with Madeleine, and of the practical result of my visit; in fact it is
from these letters, now in my hands, that I have been largely quoting.
More than a twelvemonth was to elapse before we met again, for I had
left Paris to pursue my studies under Kaulbach in Munich. The numerous
letters Claude wrote to me during the interval, mostly treat of the two
subjects uppermost in his mind, art and love. As I once more read them
over after many years, I am aware that the history of his loves really
offers no very remarkable features, and I approach the subject with some
diffidence on that account. But on the other hand I remember that we all
like the old story that always assumes a new shape; we like it perhaps,
because, in this wicked world of ours, hatred and evil influences so
constantly cross our path, that we are always glad to turn aside when
the opportunity offers, and to listen to tales of love and devotion. And
there were gold and silver threads that ran through Claude's life, as
they do through most people's.

He was very impressionable, but he never treated love lightly; he often
would see beauty where I, for the life of me, saw no more than ordinary
good looks; in fact his artistic temperament would lead him to evolve a
perfect Venus or a paragon of virtue from very slender materials. But he
was too honest, and too much of an idealist, to indulge in the popular
pastime of flirtation. Love skirmishes he might be drawn into, but they
were not of his seeking, and he usually remained on the defensive. The
Venuses and Paragons might rule supreme for a while, but when--as would
soon happen--they were found wanting in some of the perfections his
imagination had endowed them with, his idol had to step off its
pedestal. Nor was he particularly humbl