But De Montaigne's letters to Maltravers consoled him for the loss of less congenial friends. The Frenchman was now an eminent and celebrated man; and his appreciation of Maltravers was sweeter to the latter than would have been the huzzas of crowds. But, all this while, his vanity was pleased and his curiosity roused by the continued correspondence of his unseen Egeria. That correspondence (if so it may be called, being all on one side) had now gone on for a considerable time, and he was still wholly unable to discover the author: its tone had of late altered--it had become more sad and subdued--it spoke of the hollowness as well as the rewards of fame; and, with a touch of true womanly sentiment, often hinted more at the rapture of soothing dejection, than of sharing triumph. In all these letters, there was the undeniable evidence of high intellect and deep feeling; they excited a strong and keen interest in Maltravers, yet the interest was not that which made him wish to discover, in order that he might love, the writer. They were for the most part too full of the irony and bitterness of a man's spirit, to fascinate one who considered that gentleness was the essence of a woman's strength. Temper spoke in them, no less than mind and heart, and it was not the sort of temper which a man who loves women to be womanly could admire. "I hear you often spoken of" (ran one of these strange epistles), "and I am almost equally angry whether fools presume to praise or to blame you. This miserable world we live in, how I loathe and disdain it!--yet I desire you to serve and to master it! Weak contradiction, effeminate paradox! Oh! rather a thousand times that you would fly from its mean temptations and poor rewards!--if the desert were your dwelling-place and you wished one minister, I could renounce all--wealth, flattery, repute, womanhood--to serve you. * * * * * "I once admired you for your genius. My disease has fastened on me, and I now almost worship you for yourself. I have seen you, Ernest Maltravers,--seen you often,--and when you never suspected that these eyes were on you. Now that I have seen, I understand you better. We can not judge men by their books and deeds. Posterity can know nothing of the beings of the past. A thousand books never written--a thousand deeds never done--are in the eyes and lips of the few greater than the herd. In that cold, abstracted gaze, that pale and haughty brow, I read the disdain of obstacles, which is worthy of one who is confident of the goal. But my eyes fill with tears when I survey you!--you are sad, you are alone! If failures do not mortify you, success does not elevate. Oh, Maltravers, I, woman as I am, and living in a narrow circle, I, even I, know at last that to have desires nobler, and ends more august, than others, is but to surrender waking life to morbid and melancholy dreams. * * * * *