He fully believed that she had gone away resolved never to see him again, and all his thoughts became concentrated upon that idea. How could he hope to shake the resolution of a creature so sincere that she had been unable to conceal her feelings, so saint-like that she had immediately regarded her involuntary confession as a crime? And René again saw her before him with terror written on her face and tears starting from her eyes. Lost in these thoughts, he walked straight before him, unable to bear the sight of a human being, even were it Emilie, his dear confidante. Hailing a cab, he told the driver to take him to Saint-Cloud. This was the first name that rose to his lips, because Suzanne had described to him two _fêtes_ at which she had been present in the palace when quite a girl. On getting out of the cab he felt a savage delight in plunging into the denuded wood. A pale February sun lit up the bleak wintry landscape and the dry leaves cracked under his tread as he strode along. Now and then, through a network of blackened trunks and naked branches, he could see the dreary ruins of the old palace and the blue waters of the little lake upon which, in bygone days, Madame Moraines had seen the unhappy Prince, since killed at the Cape. The impressions produced by his surroundings and by these memories of a tragic past did not distract the poet's thoughts from the one idea that hypnotised him, as it were--by what means he could conquer the will of this woman whom he loved, who loved him in return, and whom he was determined to see again at all costs. What was to be done? Call at her house and demand admittance? Inflict his presence upon her by frequenting the houses she visited? Waylay her at street corners and at theatres? No--he felt that he could not do anything that might furnish Suzanne with a single reason for loving him less. It was to her that he looked for everything, even for the right of beholding her. The memory of the ideals he had cherished in the first years of his manhood and the purer years of his youth inspired him with serious thoughts of doing absolutely nothing to approach her, of obeying her as Dante would have obeyed Beatrice, Petrarch his Laura, Cino da Pistoia his Sylvia--those noble poets of the ages of chivalry who gave voice to the lofty conceptions of an imaginative and holy love full of ideal devotion. He had so often dipped with delight into the _Vita Nuova_ and devoured the sonnets these dreamers wrote their lady-loves. But how could such literature, of almost ascetic purity, hold its own against the poison of sensuous passion which, unknown to him, Suzanne's beauty and surroundings had instilled into his blood? Obey her! No--that he could not do. Fresh ideas welled up within him, and he sought to calm his overwrought nerves by exercise, the only palliative for the terrible mental agonies he was suffering.