"When as a result of his imprudence and his faith in the generosity of critics,[1] he had managed to get condemned to not seeing the woman he was in love with, except twice a month, we would see him pass those evenings, talking to her as if intoxicated with joy, because he had been received with that noble frankness which he worshipped. He held that Madame ---- and he were two souls without their like, who should understand each other with a glance. It was beyond him to grasp that she should pay the least attention to petty bourgeois comments, which tried to make a criminal of him. The result of this fine confidence in a woman, surrounded by his enemies, was to find her door closed to him. "'With M----,' I used to say to him, 'you forget [Pg 106] your maxim--that you mustn't believe in greatness of soul, except in the last extremity.' "'Do you think,' he answered, 'that the world contains another heart which is more suited to hers? True, I pay for this passionate way of being, which Léonore, in anger, made me see on the horizon in the line of the rocks of Poligny, with the ruin of all the practical enterprises of my life--a disaster which comes from my lack of patient industry and imprudence due to the force of momentary impressions.'" One can see the touch of madness! For Salviati life was divided into periods of a fortnight, which took their hue from the last interview, which he had been granted. But I noticed often, that the happiness he owed to a welcome, which he thought less cold, was far inferior in intensity to the unhappiness with which a hard reception overwhelmed him.[2] At times Madame ---- failed to be quite honest with him; and these are the only two criticisms I ever dared offer him. Beyond the more intimate side of his sorrow, of which he had the delicacy never to speak even to the friends dearest to him and most devoid of envy, he saw in a hard reception from Léonore the triumph of prosaic and scheming beings over the open-hearted and the generous. At those times he lost faith in virtue and, above all, in glory. It was his way to talk to his friends only of sad notions, to which it is true his passion led up, but notions capable besides of having some interest in the eyes of philosophy. I was curious to observe that uncommon soul. Ordinarily passion-love is found in people, a little simple in the German way.[3] Salviati, on the contrary, was among the firmest and sharpest men I have known. I seemed to notice that, after these cruel visits, he had [Pg 107] no peace until he had found a justification for Léonore's severities. So long as he felt that she might have been wrong in ill-using him, he was unhappy. Love, so devoid of vanity, I should never have thought possible. He was incessantly singing us the praises of love.