His mother, Catherine de Medicis, by prevailing on him to marry Louise de Vaudemont, one of the most beautiful women in Europe, hoped that she would make him forget her whom death had snatched from him, and he himself perhaps indulged a similar hope, but the memoirs of those times concur in asserting that the image of the Princess de Condé was never effaced from his heart, and that, to the day of his assassination, which did not happen till seventeen years after, whatever efforts he made to subdue his passion, were wholly unavailing. Sympathy is a sentiment to which few persons attach the same ideas. It may be classed in three distinct species. The first seems to have an immediate connexion with the senses; the second, with the heart; and the third, with the mind. Although it cannot be denied that the preference we bestow on this or that woman is the result of the one or the other of these, or even of all three together; yet the analysis of our attachments is, in some cases, so difficult as to defy the investigation of reason. For, as the old song says, some lovers Will "whimper and whine For lilies and roses, For eyes, lips, and noses, Or a _tip of an ear_." To cut the matter short, I think it fully proved, by the example of some of the wisest men, that the affections are often captivated by something indefinable, or, in the words of Corneille, _"Par un je ne sais quoi--qu'on ne peut exprimer."_ LETTER XXXIII. _Paris, December 14, 1801._ I have already spoken to you of the _Pont Neuf_. To the east of it, as you will see by the Plan of Paris, the small islands in the middle of the Seine are connected to its banks by several bridges; while to the west, there are two only, though a third is projected, and, previously to the late rise of the river, workmen were employed in driving piles for the foundation. I shall now describe to you these two bridges, beginning with the PONT NATIONAL. Before the revolution, this bridge bore the appellation of _Pont Royal_, from its having been built by Lewis XIV, and the expenses defrayed but of his privy purse, to supply the place of one of wood, situated opposite to the _Louvre_, which was carried away by the ice in 1684. It is reckoned one of the most solid bridges in Paris, and, till the existence of the _Pont de la Concorde_, was the only one built across the river, without taking advantage of the islands above-mentioned. It stands on four piles, forming with the two abutments five elliptical arches of a handsome sweep. The span of the centre arch is seventy-two feet, that of the two adjoining sixty-six, and that of the two outer ones sixty. On each side is a raised pavement for foot-passengers, in the middle of which I should imagine that there is breadth sufficient to admit of four carriages passing abreast.