There are some beings who, by their dazzling radiance, draw all around them into their sphere of attraction without desiring or even perceiving it. It seems as though certain natures were like the suns of some moral system, obliging the looks, thoughts, and hearts of their satellites to gravitate around them. Their moral and physical beauty is a spell, their fascination a chain, love is but their emanation. We track their upward course from earth to heaven, and when they vanish in their youth and beauty, all else seems dark to the eye that has been blinded by their brilliancy. The vulgar, even, recognize these superior beings by some mysterious sign. They admire without comprehending, as the blind enjoy the sunshine, who have never seen the sun. X. It was thus I learned that the young stranger lived in Paris. Her husband was an old man, who had rendered his name illustrious, at the close of the last century, by many discoveries which held a high place in the history of science. He had been struck with the beauty and talent of this young girl, and had adopted her in order to bequeath to her his name and fortune. She loved him as a father, wrote to him every day, and sent him a journal of her feelings and impressions. Two years ago she had fallen into a declining state, which had alarmed him. She had been recommended to remove southward and try change of air, and her husband, being too infirm to accompany her, had confided her to the care of some friends from Lausanne, with whom she had travelled all over Italy and Switzerland. The change had not restored her to health, and a Genevese doctor, fearing a disease of the heart, had recommended the baths of Aix; he was to come to fetch her, and take her back to Paris at the beginning of the winter. This was all I learned of a life already so dear. Still I persisted in fancying that all these details were indifferent to me. I felt a tender pity for this enchanting and beautiful being, blighted in the flower of youth by a disease which, while it consumes life, renders the sensations more acute and stimulates the flame which it is destined to extinguish. When I met the stranger on the staircase, I sought to discover the trace of her sufferings in the scarcely perceptible lines of pain round her somewhat pale lips, or in the dark circle which want of sleep had left round her beautiful blue eyes. I was interested by her beauty, but still more by the shadow of death by which she was overcast, and which made her appear more as a phantom of the night than as a reality. This was all. Our lives rolled on; we continued to live in close proximity as far as distance was concerned, but morally, as widely separated as ever. XI.