will flow in my veins--I shall float in heaven,
like the sun! To forget all by your side is a bliss prouder than the
highest wisdom!

* * * * *

I have read stories of love, of the charms of woman--of the perfidy of
man--but no heroine approaches my Seltanetta in loveliness of soul or
body--not one of the heroes do I resemble--I envy them the fascination,
I admire the wisdom of lovers in books--but then, how weak, how cold is
their love! It is a moonbeam playing on ice! Whence come these European
babblers of Tharsis--these nightingales of the market-place--these
sugared confections of flowers? I cannot believe that people can love
passionately, and prate of their love--even as a hired mourner laments
over the dead. The spendthrift casts his treasure by handfuls to the
wind; the lover hides it, nurses it, buries it in his heart like a
hoard.

* * * * *

I am yet young, and I ask "what is friendship?" I have a friend in V.--a
loving, real, thoughtful friend; yet I am not _his_ friend. I feel it, I
reproach myself that I do not reciprocate his regard as I ought, as he
deserves--but is in my power? In my soul there is no room for any one
but Seltanetta--in my heart there is no feeling but love.

* * * * *

No! I cannot read, I cannot understand what the Colonel explains to me.
I cheated myself when I thought that the ladder of science could be
climbed by me ... I am weary at the first steps, I lose my way on the
first difficulty, I entangle the threads, instead of unravelling them--I
pull and tear them--and I carry off nothing of the prey but a few
fragments. The _hope_ which the Colonel held out to me I mistook for my
own progress. But who--what--impedes this progress? That which makes the
happiness and misery of my life--love. In every place, in every thing, I
hear and see Seltanetta--and often Seltanetta alone. To banish her from
my thoughts I should consider sacrilege; and, even if I wished, I could
not perform the resolution. Can I see without light? Can I breathe
without air? Seltanetta is my light, my air, my life, my soul!

* * * * *

My hand trembles--my heart flutters in my bosom. If I wrote with my
blood, 'twould scorch the paper. Seltanetta! your image pursues me
dreaming or awake. The image of your charms is more dangerous than the
reality. The thought that I may never possess th