You resemble D'Albert in many ways, and, when you speak, it seems to me sometimes as if he were speaking.--I have no doubt that, when you know him better, you will become much attached to him; you cannot fail to suit each other.--He is tormented as you are, by these same aimless impulses; he is head over ears in love but does not know with what; he would like to ascend to Heaven, for the earth seems to him like a stool hardly fit for one of his feet to rest upon, and he has more pride than Lucifer before his fall. THÉODORE. I was afraid at first that he was one of those poets, of whom there are so many, who have driven poetry off the face of the earth, one of those stringers of false pearls who see nothing in the world but the last syllables of words, and who, when they have made _ombre_ rhyme with _sombre, flame_ with _âme_, and _Dieu_ with _lieu_, fold their arms and legs conscientiously and permit the spheres to accomplish their revolutions. ROSETTE. He is not one of that kind. His verses are beneath him and do not contain his thought. You would form a very mistaken idea of his nature from what he has written; his real poem is himself, and I don't know if he will ever produce another. He has, in the depths of his mind, a seraglio of choice ideas which he surrounds with a triple wall, and of which he is more jealous than ever sultan was of his odalisques.--He puts in his poetry only those ideas that he holds in light esteem, or with which he has become disgusted; he makes his verse the door through which he expels them and the world receives only those for which he has no further use. THÉODORE. I can understand his jealousy and his modesty.--Just as many men do not care for the love they have had until they no longer have it, or for their mistresses until they are dead. ROSETTE.