I was so entirely absorbed in my love that I scarcely gave a thought to the great change that had taken place in my grief. It was just nine months since I had lost my father, and already the remembrance of his death, at first so constant and so bitter, was beginning little by little to fade away. I had begun by going every morning to the cemetery, then I went only once in awhile, sometime later I substituted for this pious visit some few hours spent in meditation before my father's portrait. I had caused this portrait to be placed in a frame which closed with two folding panels, thinking it a profanation to leave the image of those we hold most dear exposed to the gaze of the thoughtless and indifferent; besides, I considered that such contemplation, from which we hope to receive elevated and serious thoughts, should be premeditated and not due to our having by chance given a hasty look at the beloved face. The frame which contained the portrait became for me, thus, a sort of tabernacle, which I never opened without a solemn and pious sense of meditation. But alas! these contemplations, daily at first, soon became less frequent, from the very fact that my eyes could not become accustomed to look with indifference on this sacred image, which I gazed on more and more rarely. I can never explain the almost frightened impression with which I would unlock the panels: my heart would beat violently on beholding the pale and stern face of my father, who seemed to step out of the canvas with his imposing look of calmness and sadness, and to reproach me for my ingratitude and forgetfulness of his memory, which, alas! he had predicted. Then, quite terrified, I would close the frame suddenly, and would weep bitter tears over my indifference; but these harrowing regrets lasted but a short time, and I would be overcome with shame as I said to myself: "For the time being I am grievously distressed, and yet to-morrow, this evening perhaps, I shall have forgotten him altogether and shall be smiling and happy in the society of Hélène." No, nothing can give an idea of the painful resentment such a thought caused me. It was an insult to my grief, showing me the uselessness of it, even at the very moment of my truest and most heartbroken despair. At last, I tell it to my shame, having gone a whole month without opening the picture-frame, I had the inconceivable cowardice to really dread a sight of it, so much did I fear this sort of apparition. At a later day I braved it, however, and you will see how the act, insignificant as it was, reacted on all my ensuing destiny. These impressions, which I can now coldly analyse, excited and confused me at the time; but though I was steeped in the intoxication of a first love, I could yet feel their painful and deadening influence.