Sometimes--very rarely, however--the idea takes a more definite form.--It will be some lovely woman whom I don't know and who doesn't know me, whom I have met at church or at the theatre and who has not taken the slightest notice of me.--I rush all over the house, and until I have opened the door of the last room--I hardly dare confess it, it is so utterly absurd--I hope that she has come and is there.--It is not conceit on my part.--I am so far from being conceited that several women have taken a most affectionate interest in me--at least so others have told me--when I had supposed them to be entirely indifferent to me and never to have thought much about me.--That comes from another source. When I am not stupefied by ennui and discouragement my mind awakes and recovers all its former vigor. I hope, I love, I desire, and my desires are so violent that I imagine they will force everything to come to them, as a powerful magnet attracts bits of iron although they are at a great distance.--That is why I wait for the things I desire, instead of going to them, and I often neglect opportunities that open most favorably before my hopes.--Another than I would write the most amorous note you can imagine to his heart's divinity, or would seek an opportunity to approach her.--But I ask the messenger for the reply to a letter I have not written, and pass my time constructing in my brain situations most marvellously adapted to exhibit me to the woman I love in the most unlooked-for and most favorable light.--I could make a book thicker and more ingenious than the Stratagems of Polybius of all the stratagems I invent to make my way to her presence and reveal my passion to her. Generally it would be enough to say to one of my friends: "Present me to Madame So-and-So," and to indulge in a mythological compliment suitably punctuated with sighs. After listening to all this, one would naturally think me a fit subject for the Petites-Maisons; I am a sensible fellow enough, however, and I haven't carried many mad ideas into execution. All this takes place in the cellar of my brain, and all these ridiculous ideas are very carefully buried in my lowest depths; no one notices anything on the outside, and I am reputed to be a calm, cold young man, by no means susceptible to female charms and indifferent to things affected by most young men of my age; all of which is as far from the truth as society's judgments usually are.