"Would you believe that, on my arrival at Geneva, the first thing that I did, even before I thought of writing to you, was to go out and buy a waistcoat? Yes, a summer waistcoat, a very pretty one, on my word, and very well made, which I found at a French tailor's,--a most agreeable find for a traveller in great haste to leave this city of watchmakers and naturalists! Behold me, therefore, parading the streets of Geneva, delighted with my new waistcoat, and halting in front of a book-shop where an edition of Byron, bound in exquisite taste, offered an irresistible temptation to me. What am I to read while travelling? I cannot endure books of travel, unless they treat of countries which I shall never be able to visit. I prefer the poets, who take you into the world of their dreams, and I purchased this edition. And then I followed aimlessly a very pretty girl in a short dress who passed me, and whose ankle seemed to me a masterpiece of jointing. I followed her, thinking much more of my waistcoat than of her. Suddenly she turned to the right and I to the left without noticing it, and I found myself back at my hotel, where, as I went to put my new books in my trunk, I discovered the double violets that you strewed in my cabin on the _Ferruccio_ when we parted. I picked them up, one by one, with great care, and kept them as a relic; but they made me weep like a waterspout, and, glancing at my new waistcoat, which had been the principal event of my morning, I said to myself: "'And yet this is the child that poor woman loved!'" Elsewhere he said: "You made me promise to take care of my health. 'As it was I who gave it back to you,' you said, 'it belongs to me in a measure, and I have the right to forbid you to throw it away.'--Alas! my Thérèse, what do you expect me to do with this infernal health, which begins to intoxicate me like new wine? The spring is at hand, it is the season for loving, I know; but is it in my power to love? _You_ were unable to inspire true love in my heart, and do you suppose that I shall meet a woman capable of performing the miracle that you could not perform? Where am I to find this magician? In society? No, surely not: there are no women there but those who do not choose to risk or sacrifice anything. They are quite right, no doubt, and you could tell them, my poor dear, that those for whom a woman sacrifices herself seldom deserve it; but it is not my fault if I can no more readily make up my mind to share with a husband than with a lover. But should I love a maiden? and marry her? Oh! surely, Thérèse, you cannot think of that without laughing--or without trembling. Think of me, chained by the law, when even my own desires are powerless to chain me!