Spite of my continual efforts and of the perpetual application of my young and ardent imagination to communicate to my letters the fire that consumed me, to create a language for my sighs, to pour my burning soul upon the paper and make it overleap the distance that divided us,--in this combat against the impotence of words, I was always surpassed by Julie. Her letters had more expression in one phrase than mine in their eight pages,--her heart breathed in the words; one saw her looks in the lines; the expressions seemed still warm from her lips. In her, nothing evaporated during that slow and dull transition of the feeling to the word which lets the lava of the heart cool and pale beneath the pen of man. Woman has no style, that is why all she says is so well said. Style is a garment, but the unveiled soul stands forth upon the lips or beneath the hand of woman. Like the Venus of speech, it rises from the depths of feeling in its naked beauty, wakes of itself to life, wonders at its own existence, and is adored ere it knows that it has spoken. LVI. What letters and what ardor! What tones and accents! What fire and purity combined, like light and transparency in a diamond, like passion and bashfulness on the brow of the young girl who loves! What powerful simplicity! What inexhaustible effusions! What sudden revivals in the midst of languor! What sounds and songs! Then there would be sadness, recurring like the unexpected notes at the end of an air; caressing words, which seemed to fan the brow like the breath of a fond mother bending over her smiling child; a voluptuous lulling of half-whispered words, and hushed and dreamy sentences, which wrapped one in rays and murmurs, stillness and perfume, and led one gently by the soft and soothing syllables to the repose of love, the still sleep of the soul, unto the kiss upon the page which said farewell! The farewell and the kiss both silently received, as the lips silently impressed them. I have seen those letters all again; I have read over, page by page, this correspondence, bound up and classed, after death, by the pious hand of friendship; one letter answering the other from the first note down to the last word written by the death-struck hand, to which love still imparted strength. I have read them o'er, and burned them with tears, in secret, as if I committed a crime, and snatching twenty times the half-consumed page from the flames to read it once again. Why did I thus destroy? Because their very ashes would have been too burning for this world, and I have scattered them to the winds of heaven. LVII.