of torture more eagerly than ever husband descended from the nuptial scaffold. That is the history of many passions. It is the history of all pleasures. However that may be--despite the interruption or because of the interruption--never had such a blissful sensation fallen to my lot: I felt that I was really somebody else. Rosette's soul in its entirety had entered into my body. My soul had left me and filled her heart as hers had filled mine. They had met, no doubt, during that long equestrian kiss, as Rosette dubbed it afterward--to my annoyance by the way--and had penetrated and mingled as inextricably as the souls of two mortal creatures can upon a morsel of perishable clay. Angels surely must kiss like that, and the real paradise is not in heaven but on the lips of the woman we love. I have waited in vain for such a moment and have tried unsuccessfully to lead up to a repetition of it. We have often ridden together through the avenue of elms at sunset on lovely evenings; the trees had the same verdure, the birds sang the same song, but to us the sun seemed dull, the foliage withered: the song of the birds had a harsh, discordant sound, we were no longer in harmony with it all. We brought our horses to a walk and we tried the same kiss.--Alas! only our lips met and it was only the spectre of the former kiss.--The beautiful, the sublime, the divine, the only real kiss I have given and received in my whole life had flown away forever. Since that day I have always had an inexpressibly sad feeling on returning from the forest. Rosette, light-hearted madcap that she naturally is, cannot avoid the feeling and her reverie betrays itself by a sweet little pout, which is at least as attractive as a smile. Scarcely anything but the fumes of wine and a great blaze of candles enable me to shake off these fits of depression. We both drink like men condemned to death, silently and glass after glass, until we have swallowed the necessary amount; then we begin to laugh and mock most heartily at what we call our sentimentality. We laugh--because we cannot weep. Ah! who will succeed in sowing a tear in my parched eye?