And then the pent-up confidence burst forth. Emilie had to listen to an enthusiastic eulogy of Suzanne and all that concerned her. In the same breath René spoke of the lofty nobility of this woman's ideas and of the shape of her shoes, of her marvellous intelligence and of the figured velvet oh her blotting-book. That childish astonishment at these luxurious details should be united to the more poetic fancies in the fabric of love did not surprise Emilie. Had she herself in her love for René not always associated petty desires with boundless ambition? She wished, for instance, with almost equal fervour, that he might have genius and horses, that he might write another 'Childe Harold,' and possess Byron's income of four thousand a year. In this she was as ingenuously plebeian as he himself, confounding--in excusable fashion, after all--real aristocracy of sentiment with that aristocracy expressed by outer and worldly forms. Those who come of a family in which the struggle for bread has lowered the tone of thought easily mistake the second of these aristocracies for a condition inseparable from the first. Those words, therefore, which might have led an unkind listener to think that René loved Suzanne for her surroundings, and not for herself, charmed Emilie instead of shocking her, and she had so fully entered into her brother's infatuation that on leaving him she said: 'You are not at home to anyone--I'll see that no one comes in. You must show me your verses when you have written them--mind you choose them well.' The task of making this selection cheated the poet's ardour, and he was able to await the day fixed for his next visit to the paradise in the Rue Murillo without much impatience. The hours of solitude, broken only by his talks with Emilie, passed by in alternate fits of happiness and melancholy. Often a delightful vision of Suzanne would rise up before him. He would then lay down his pen, and all the objects about him would melt away, as if by magic. Instead of the red hangings of his room, it was the little _salon_ of Madame Moraines that he saw; gone were his dear Albert Dürers, his Gustave Moreaus, his Goyas, his small library on whose shelves the 'Imitatio' rubbed shoulders with 'Madame Bovary'--gone were the two leafless trees that stood out black against a light blue sky. But in their place he could see Suzanne, her dainty ways, the poise of her head, the peculiar golden tint of her hair, and the transparent pink of her lovely complexion.