“I must examine the part,” said I; and, kneeling down, I proceeded with what I imagined to be a most chirurgical air, to investigate the injury. As a worshipper might have touched a holy relic, I suffered my hand to glide over that beautifully rounded instep, but all so delicately and gently that I could not say whether the thrill that touch sent through me was not the act of my own nerves. She seemed, however, to tremble; her foot moved slightly, and a gentle action of her shoulders, like a shudder, bespoke pain. It was the sort of movement that one might make in being tickled; and as great agony causes this movement occasionally, I said, “I trust I have not hurt you? I 'd not have done so for worlds.” She took her handkerchief and pressed it to her face, and I thought she sobbed; but she never said a word. “Alors!” cried the maid. “What do you say is to be done?” “Ice,” said I. “Iced water and perfect repose.” “And where are we to get ice in this barbarous place?” “Madame,” said I, “the place is less savage than you deem, and ice shall be procured. There is a monastery at Offenbach where they have ice throughout the year. I will despatch an estafette there at once.” The lady bent forward, and whispered something in the maid's ear. “Madame desires to thank you sincerely,” said the maid. “She is much impressed by your consideration and kindness.” “I will return in a couple of hours,” said I, with a most doctorial sententiousness, and in reality eagerly desiring to be alone, and in the privacy of my own room, before I should break out in those wild ecstasies which I felt were struggling within me for utterance. I sat down to make a clean breast of it in these confessions, but I must ask my reader to let me pass over unrecorded the extravagances I gave way to when once more alone. There are men--I am one of them--who require, constitutionally require, to be in love. That necessity which Don Quixote proclaimed to be a condition of knightly existence,--the devotion to a mistress,--is an essential to certain natures. This species of temperament pertained to me in my boyhood. It has followed me through life with many pains and suffering, but also with great compensations. I have ever been a poor man,--my friends can tell that I have not been a lucky one,--and yet to be rich and fortunate together, I would not resign that ecstasy, that sentiment of love, which, though its object may have changed, has still power to warm up the embers of my heart, and send through me a glow that revives the days of my hot youth and my high hopes.