you may count my sighs, my tears for you.”  O lovely, and beloved being! you will often smile at my strange phantasies—­long will they supply matter for our conversations.  But, by your side, enchantress, shall I be able to remember the past?...  No, no!...  Every thing before me, every thing around me, will then fade away, except the present bliss—­to be with you!  O, how burning, and how light will my soul be!  Liquid sunshine 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!

* * * * *