“You have been such a long time writing to me that I began to be very uneasy. Besides, I have been harassed by an absurd idea, which I have not dared to tell you before. I was visiting the amphitheatre at Nîmes with an architect of the department, who was explaining to me at length the repairs which he had had made there, when I saw ten feet away a lovely bird, a little larger than a tomtit, with a linen-gray body, and wings of red, black and white. This bird was perched on a cornice, gazing at me fixedly. I interrupted the architect, who is a great sportsman, to ask him the name of the bird. He told me he had never seen one like it. I approached, and, perching a few steps beyond, and still watching me, the bird did not take flight until I was close enough to touch it. Wherever I went the bird seemed to follow, for I saw it on every tier of the amphitheatre. It had no companion, and its flight was noiseless, like that of a bird of night. “The next day I returned to the amphitheatre, and there was my bird again. I had brought some bread with me, which I threw to it. The bird looked at the food, but would not touch it. I then tempted it with a big grasshopper, thinking from the shape of the bill that it would eat insects, but the bird paid no attention to the grasshopper. The most learned ornithologist in the city told me that no bird of that species lived in the country. “Finally, when I visited the amphitheatre for the last time, I found my bird again, still pursuing my steps, following me even into a narrow, dark corridor, where, bird of light that it was, it should not have dared to venture. “I recalled then that the duchess of Buckingham had seen her husband in the form of a bird the day of his assassination, and the thought came to me that you were dead, perhaps, and that you had assumed this form in order to visit me. In spite of myself, I could not shake off this foolish idea, and I was delighted, I assure you, to see that your letter bore the date of the day when I had first seen my mysterious bird.” It is thus that, even in a sceptic, affection and imagination are stirred; ‘tis a “piece of folly,” to be sure, but it is no less true that he was on the threshold of dreaming and in the highway of love.[2] But along with the lover dwelt the critic, and the conflict between these two personages in the same man was productive of strange results. In such a case, it is better, perhaps, not to look too closely. “Do you realise,” said La Fontaine, “that I am as blind to the faults of persons whom I may love never so little, as if I were a mole living a hundred feet under the ground? No sooner do I feel an atom of love, than I hasten to moisten it with all the incense of my store-house.” This, perhaps, is the secret of his charm.