fear of selling our souls, and we remained in our miserable state of poverty, which grew worse and worse as the months passed by, leaving an impression of unhappiness on me which has never been obliterated. My mother was brave and daring, and she made up her mind to go to America to look for a wealthy relative there, in the hope of re-establishing the fortunes of her family. Her four children shuddered at the prospect of the voyage, so she only took me with her. I was willing enough to go with her, but the sacrifice cost me all my lightness of heart, for I worshipped my father as one worships God Himself. That long journey, the seaports, the great ocean filled me with terror, and I sheltered against my mother's garments as my only harbour of refuge. When we reached America, my mother found her cousin a widow, driven from her estate by the negroes. The colony had risen in revolt, and the yellow fever was raging in all its horror. Awakened thus rudely from her cherished dream, she could not bear up under the fresh blow that had overtaken us. It killed her, and she died at the age of forty-one. I nearly died by her side when they took me in my mourning dress from the rapidly depopulating isle and shipped me from vessel to vessel, until I was restored again to my relatives, who were now poorer than ever. Then it was that the theatre offered us a harbour of refuge. I was taught to sing; I tried hard to recover my cheerfulness of disposition but it was of no use; I managed better in melancholy or passion-fraught parts. That is practically the whole of my life-story. I was taken on at the Théâtre Feydeau, and everybody predicted a brilliant future before me. I was made a member before I was sixteen, without either hoping or asking for it; but at that time my insignificant part only brought me in eighty francs per month, and the poverty with which I struggled passes description. I was obliged to sacrifice the future for the sake of the present, and for my father's sake I returned to the provinces. At twenty, a great sorrow compelled me to give up singing. The very sound of my voice would set me weeping; but the music still rang in my unhappy head, and the measured rhythms unwittingly forced my thoughts to keep pace with them. I felt compelled to commit my fevered ideas to paper, and when it was done I was told I had written an elegy. M. Alibert, who looked after my very frail health, recommended me to write as a curative, for he knew nought else that would be of any avail. I followed his advice without any knowledge or study of my subject. And this gave me much extra trouble, because I could never find the right words to express my thoughts. My first volume was published in 1822. You asked, dear friend, how I came to be a poet. I can only answer you by telling you how I came to write."