I can still call up from the past those hours of parting. It was on the evening before I was to leave. I had been for several days at the house of an acquaintance in Vienna, to make my preparations. The last day Artur also came in from Harmannsdorf to be with me for the last time. My hostess left us alone—she knew that we still had much to say to each other. But it was hard to talk. We clung in a close embrace and wept. “To part!” Is it possible? Have we the strength for it? It must be—what could we do if I remained? Ah, it would have been too beautiful ... it could not be.... And again two salt-tasting kisses, again sobs and new laments, new grief-trembling words of endearment. Before he went he knelt before me and humbly kissed the hem of my gown: “Matchless, royally generous-hearted woman—I thank thee, thank thee from the bottom of my heart! Through thy love thou hast taught me to know a happiness which shall consecrate all my life. Farewell!” XVI THE ZENITH OF HAPPINESS Arrival in Paris · Alfred Nobel’s personality · Unendurable agony of separation · Two dispatches · A plan of action · Arrival at Vienna · Blissful meeting · At last and forever united I reached Paris early in the morning. Mr. Nobel came to meet me at the station and took me to the Grand Hôtel on the Boulevard des Capucins, where rooms had been engaged for me. He left me at the door and said he would call a few hours later after I was rested. I could not as yet take up my quarters in his little _palais_ in the Rue Malakoff, because the suite that I was to occupy was just being carpeted and furnished for me; so for the time I should have to stay on at the hotel. Alfred Nobel made a very pleasing impression. He was not indeed an “elderly gentleman,” as the advertisement gave us to understand and as we all imagined him, gray-haired and feeble—not at all. Born in 1833, he was then forty-three years old, rather below the medium height, with dark, full beard, with features neither ugly nor handsome; his expression rather gloomy, softened only by kindly blue eyes; in his voice there was a melancholy alternating with a satirical tone. Sad and sarcastic, such was his nature. Was that the reason Byron was his favorite poet? After a few hours, then, when I had rested and refreshed myself and sent a dispatch to Harmannsdorf, he came to see me. The letters that we had written to each other caused us to meet on a different footing from that of entire strangers, and the conversation was immediately put on an animated and stimulating basis. After _déjeuner_, which we took in the dining-room downstairs, we got into his carriage and drove through the Champs-Élysées. Then he showed me his house, and the rooms that were reserved for me.