I had no need to look for a lodging in Paris. One of my friends, the young Count de V----, who had just returned from his travels, was to spend the winter and the following spring there, and had offered to share with me a little _entresol_ that he occupied, over the rooms of the concierge in the magnificent hotel (since pulled down) of the Maréchal de Richelieu, in the Rue Neuve St. Augustin. The Count de V----, with whom I was in almost daily correspondence, knew all. I had given him a letter of introduction to Julie, that he might know the soul of my soul, and that he might understand, if not my delirium, at least my adoration for that woman. At first sight, he comprehended and almost shared my enthusiasm. In his letters, he always alluded, with tender pity and respect, to that fair vision of melancholy, which seemed hovering between life and death, and only detained on earth, he said, by the ineffable love she bore to me. He always spoke to me of her as of a heavenly gift, sent to my eyes and heart, and which would raise me above human nature as long as I remained enveloped in her radiance. V----, who was persuaded of the holy and superhuman nature of our attachment, considered it as a virtue, and felt no repugnance to being the mediator and confidant of our love. Julie, on her part, spoke of V---- as the only friend she considered worthy of me, and for whom she would have wished to increase my friendship, instead of detracting from it by a mean jealousy of the heart. Both urged me to come to Paris, but V----, alone, knew the secret motives, and the strictly material impossibility, which had detained me till then. Spite of his devoted friendship, of which he gave me, until his death, so many proofs during the troubles of my life, it was not in his power at that time to remove the obstacles that arrested me. His mother had exhausted her means to give him an education befitting his rank, and to allow him to travel through Europe. He was himself deep in debt, and could only offer me a corner in the apartment that his family provided for him. As to all the rest, he was, at that time of his life, as poor and as much enslaved as myself by the want so cruelly defined by Horace--_Res angustæ domi_.