"You forget," I broke in, "that people wish to enjoy fiction with the heart alone, not with the intellect, and that the heart refuses everything which is not closely akin to it. Therefore I feel very lenient toward the average reader. In real life he is interested only in certain things which he understands, prizes, and considers desirable; such as money and land, social reputation, family happiness, and more of the same sort. Consequently, he likes in books only such stories as deal with rich and poor, rogues and honest men, and, for a sort of relish, with a little of the so-called love necessary to complete a happy marriage. Whatsoever there is beyond that, is evil. Yet in every human breast there lives a still presentiment that there is something glorious about the unusual, about a feeling, for instance, that fills the heart to overflowing, even to the breaking of all conventional bonds. But my poor wise Leopardi was right; the world laughs at things which it otherwise must admire, and, like the fox in the fable, blames what it really envies. A great love, for example, with its passionate joys and sorrows, is universally envied, and therefore unsparingly condemned. They consider it dangerous, and I have found this view sanctioned everywhere in men's judgments of life and fiction. 'Do not destroy my home!' cries the peaceful citizen to the passion which is breaking into his house like an armed man. And if he feels himself adequately protected by his armor of conventionality, more invulnerable than iron or steel, he fears for children and parents, and the tender heart of his wife. Although the danger may not have been great after all. Only what we recognize as true has power over our souls; and surely you yourself have seldom encountered in this cold world of ours any strong passion or heart-instinct out of the catechism, and yet truly felt." "That is true," he said, "and therefore I have never yet discovered, either in psychology or romance, a trace of that peculiar situation which I mentioned. Once I imagined that, in the writings of one whom I consider a true artist, I had found something similar when, in looking over Alfred Musset's short stories, I came across the title '_Les Deux Maîtresses_.' But no, the hero loved one and flirted with the other. That happens thousands of times. But what I mean--" He broke off, seeming to regret that he had gone so far. I allowed only a slight word to betray my intense interest. I did not wish to elicit any confidence which he would not freely give me. I knew also that there is a midnight hour for long-buried histories, when they burst the bars of the closed breast and rise up to walk about once more in the pale light of a starry heaven. One must then guard his tongue well, for a careless word may frighten the timid ghosts back to their graves.