not owe it to you in return for your intoxicating flattery?  If it is a glorious thing to marry a great renown, remember also that you must soon discover a superior man to be, in all that makes a man, like other men.  He therefore poorly realizes the hopes that attach to him as a phoenix.  He becomes like a woman whose beauty is over-praised, and of whom we say:  “I thought her far more lovely.”  She has not warranted the portrait painted by the fairy to whom I owe your letter,—­the fairy whose name is Imagination.

Believe me, the qualities of the mind live and thrive only in a sphere invisible, not in daily life; the wife of a poet bears the burden; she sees the jewels manufactured, but she never wears them.  If the glory of the position fascinates you, hear me now when I tell you that its pleasures are soon at an end.  You will suffer when you find so many asperities in a nature which, from a distance, you thought equable, and such coldness at the shining summit.  Moreover, as women never set their feet within the world of real difficulties, they cease to appreciate what they once admired as soon as they think they see the inner mechanism of it.

I close with a last thought, in which there is no disguised entreaty; it is the counsel of a friend.  The exchange of souls can take place only between persons who are resolved to hide nothing from each other.  Would you show yourself for such as you are to an unknown man?  I dare not follow out the consequences of that idea.

  Deign to accept, mademoiselle, the homage which we owe to all
  women, even those who are disguised and masked.

So this was the letter she had worn between her flesh and her corset above her palpitating heart throughout one whole day!  For this she had postponed the reading until the midnight hour when the household slept, waiting for the solemn silence with the eager anxiety of an imagination on fire!  For this she had blessed the poet by anticipation, reading a thousand letters ere she opened one,—­fancying all things, except this drop of cold water falling upon the vaporous forms of her illusion, and dissolving them as prussic acid dissolves life.  What could she do but hide herself in her bed, blow out her candle, bury her face in the sheets and weep?

All this happened during the first days of July.  But Modeste presently got up, walked across the room and opened the window.  She wanted air.  The fragrance of the flowers came to her with the peculiar freshness of the odors of the night.  The sea, lighted by the moon, sparkled like a mirror.  A nightingale was singing in a tree.  “Ah, there is the poet!” thought Modeste, whose anger subsided at once.  Bitter reflections chased each other through her mind.  She was cut to the quick; she wished to re-read the letter, and lit a candle; she studied the sentences so carefully studied when written; and ended by hearing the wheezing voice of the outer world.