Love is a passion so fervid and so deep that we must not wonder if it has abrupt convulsions and sudden swoons. Accustomed to dwell always in lofty regions, to have but extreme voluptuousness for nourishment, to vibrate with the highest notes of sentiment and the delirium of the senses, it may instantaneously become possessed, when it least expects it, by unreasonable fears, idiotic suspicions, inexplicable restlessness. By this I do not mean diffidence, jealousy, disgust, weary libertinism, or bitter disappointments, but a vague and shapeless fog that invades the heart which, by feeling too deeply, has become languid and congeals the nerves exhausted from excessive quivering. It is an indefinable hysteria which from a slight disorder may develop into a most intense bitterness. An immense love, whatever the source of the heart from which it springs forth, is always followed by the shadow of an infinite fear. You adore your child; you have left him for five minutes on the lawn or in your garden, intent on filling his little cart with sand; he was as rosy and fresh as the flowers near him; as bright as the sun that gilded his curly locks. Now, while you are seated at your table, you have wished to call him, I know not why, perhaps to hear the sweet sound of his silvery voice; and he does not answer you. You call him again, and again silence. He is utterly absorbed in the ponderous care of his wagon; but you, flying in a few seconds over a thousand miles of thought, have imagined that he was dead, that a snake had bitten him, that he had fallen in a swoon--who knows the fantastic visions that have passed through your mind! With your heart throbbing, your skin in a perspiration, you are afraid to rise and wish to defer for a moment the spectacle of a cruel loss. Of these and greater follies we are given a sad spectacle every day by that love of loves which alone was called by this name as the prince and god of all the amorous sentiments. Neither the most patient and long observation of human phenomena nor the most lively imagination could enable us to divine all the petty tortures that lovers inflict upon themselves, perhaps to obey that cruel law which, according to some persons, has decreed that no one shall be happy on this planet.