The other day I went sailing. On the river there were any number of little sail-boats, carrying all sorts of people. There was one very large boat in which were several women of questionable manners. All these boats had landed, and from the largest stepped a man about forty years old, who was amusing himself by playing on a tambourine. While I was admiring the musical talent of this creature, a woman of perhaps twenty-three, approached him, calling him a monster, telling him that she had followed him from Paris, and that if he would not allow her to join him he would repent it. All this occurred on the bank, about twenty feet from our boat. The man with the tambourine continued playing while the deserted woman was thus holding forth, and with the utmost indifference replied that he did not intend to have her in his boat; whereupon she climbed out to the boat moored farthest from the bank, and threw herself into the river, splashing us abominably. Although she had extinguished my cigar, indignation did not deter me, or my friends either, from pulling her out of the water before she had been in it long enough to swallow two glasses. The beauteous object of all this despair had not so much as budged, and murmured between his teeth, “Why rescue her, when she wished to drown herself?” We took the woman to an inn, and as it was getting late, and it was almost dinner-time, we left her to the care of the tavernkeeper’s wife. How does it happen that the most indifferent men are the best beloved by women? This is what I asked myself as I sailed down the Seine, what I am still asking myself, and what I beg you to tell me, if you know. Good-bye. Write to me often; let us be friends, and pardon the incoherence of my letter. Some day I will explain the reason. IV _Mariquita de mi alma_ (it is thus that I should commence if we were in Granada), I received your letter in one of those moments of melancholy when one views life only through dark glasses. As your epistle is not as amiable as it might be--pardon my frankness--it has contributed not a little to the continuance of my sulky mood. I wished to answer your letter Sunday, promptly and sharply; promptly, because you had censured me in an indirect sort of way, and sharply, because I was furious with you.