What a fate is that of the poor man at the rich man's door! what ghastly irony in a palace opposite a hovel, the ideal opposite the real, poetry opposite prose! what deep-rooted hatred must tighten the knots at the bottom of the poor wretches' hearts! what a gnashing of teeth there must be at night on their poor beds, when the wind brings to their ears the sighing notes of the lutes and viols of love! Poets, painters, sculptors, musicians, why have you lied to us? Poets, why did you tell us your dreams? Painters, why did you place upon your canvas the intangible phantom that ascended and descended between your heart and your brain with the throbbing of your blood, and say to us: "This is a woman." Sculptors, why did you procure marble from the bowels of Carrara to make it express for all time, in the eyes of all men, your most secret and most fleeting desire? Musicians, why did you listen to the song of the stars and the flowers during the night, and note it down? Why do you write such lovely ballads that the softest voice that says to us: "I love you!" seems to us as hoarse as the rasping of a saw or the cawing of a crow?--My curse on you, impostors!--and may the fire from heaven burn and destroy all pictures, poems, statues, and concerted pieces.--Ouf! there's a tirade of interminable length and a little out of the ordinary epistolary style.--What a harangue! I just gave full swing to the lyric impulse, my dear friend, and I have been talking on stilts for a long, long time. All this is very far from our subject, which is, if I remember rightly, the glorious and triumphant history of the Chevalier d'Albert in pursuit of Daraïde, the loveliest princess in the world, as the old romances say. But in truth the story is so poor that I am compelled to have recourse to digressions and reflections. I hope that it will not always be so, and that, before long, the romance of my life will be more involved and complicated than a Spanish imbroglio.