I had learnt much during those six weeks by watching others; besides, this time, I was not entangled with a sarcastic and exacting Parisian girl, who knew the world so much better than I did. No, my love affair was with a young girl more shy than myself, who mistook my pretended courage for genuine, and who, like the frog in the fable that jumped in the pond when a frightened hare passed by it, was good enough to fear me and to prove to me that it was possible to come across someone even more timid than myself. It can be seen how such a change in the position of things gave me assurance. The rôles were now completely reversed. This time I was the attacking party and someone else was on the defensive, and this someone was making such an obstinate resistance that I soon realised my attack was useless and that I should only succeed in breaking down the serious resistance offered me after, maybe, a long and patient wooing: the citadel was not to be stormed. Then began for me those first days, the reflection of which has lasted throughout the whole of my life: that delicious struggle of love, which asks unceasingly and is not discouraged by an eternity of refusal; the obtaining of favour after favour, each of which, when gained, fills the soul with ecstasy; the early fleeting dawn of life which hovers above the earth, shaking down handfuls of flowers upon the heads of mortals, and then, under the influence of the rising sun, adds consciousness to its joy and is soon enveloped in the ardent heat of passion. Indeed, it was a happy time for me. In the morning, when I awoke, my mother's smile greeted me and her lingering kisses hung on my lips; from nine to four o'clock came my work--work, it is true, which would have been tiresome if I had been obliged to understand what I wrote, but which was easy and welcome, for while my hands and eyes were copying, my mind was free to commune with my own happy thoughts; then, from four till eight o'clock, I was with my mother; and after eight, joy, love, life, hope, happiness!