your head, like a bee in spring, prevents your hearing its voice; the void in your heart is filled and your memories are effaced by present impressions,--But in my case it is different: I love no one and it is from weariness and disgust with myself rather than with her that I wish I were able to break with Rosette. My former ideas, which had become a little indistinct in my mind, are coming to the front again, more foolish than ever.--I am, as formerly, tortured by the longing to have a mistress, and, as formerly, even in Rosette's arms I doubt whether I have ever had one.--I see once more the lovely lady at her window, in her park of the time of Louis XIII., and the huntress on her white horse gallops along the forest path.--My ideal beauty smiles upon me from her hammock of clouds, I fancy that I recognize her voice in the song of the birds, in the rustling of the foliage; it seems to me that some one is calling me from every direction, and that the daughters of the air brush my face with the fringe of their invisible scarfs. As in the days of my agitation, I imagine that, if I should set out instantly and go somewhere very far away at great speed, I should reach some place where things that concern me are taking place and where my destiny is being decided.--I feel that somebody is impatiently awaiting my coming in some corner of the earth, I don't know where. Some suffering soul who cannot come to me is calling eagerly to me and dreaming of me; that is the reason of my uneasiness and of my inability to remain in one place; I am being violently drawn away from my centre. Mine is not one of those natures to which others flock, one of those fixed stars about which other radiant bodies gravitate; I must needs wander through the expanse of heaven like an erratic meteor, until I have fallen in with the planet whose satellite I am to be, the Saturn about whom I am to pass my ring. Oh! when will that union take place? Until then I cannot hope for rest or peace of mind, but I shall be like the bewildered, vacillating needle of a compass, seeking its pole. I allowed my wing to be caught in the deceitful snare, hoping to leave only a feather there and to retain the power to fly away when it seemed good to me: nothing could be more difficult; I find myself covered by an invisible net, harder to break than the one forged by Vulcan, and the mesh is so fine and close that there are no openings through which I can escape. The net is large and roomy, however, and I can move about in it with an appearance of freedom; it is hardly perceptible except when you try to break it; but then it resists and becomes as firm as a wall of brass. How much time I have lost, O my ideal! without the slightest effort to realize thee! How basely I have yielded to the temptation of a night's pleasure! and how little I deserve to meet thee!