La Marquise contemplates reform, romances, social poetry, humanitarian and palingenesic treatises, and scattered about on the tables and chairs were to be seen solemn old books, dog-leaved at their most tiresome pages, all of which is very appalling. Nothing is more convenient than a muse whose complete works are printed; one knows then what to expect, and you have not always the reading of Damocles hanging over your head. Dragged by a fatality that so often makes me the victim of women I do not admire, I became the Conrad, the Lara of this Byronic heroine. Every morning she sent me folio-sized epistles, dated three hours after midnight. They were compilations from Frederick Soulié, Eugene Sue, and Alexander Dumas, glorious authors, whom I delight to read save in my amorous correspondence, where a feminine mistake in orthography gives me more pleasure than a phrase plagiarised from George Sand, or a pathetic tirade stolen from a popular dramatist. In short, I do not believe in a passion told in language that smells of the lamp; and the expression "_Je t'aime_" will scarcely persuade me if it be not written "_Je thême_." It made no difference how often the beauty wrote, I fortified myself against her literary visitations by consigning her billets-doux unopened to an empty drawer. By this means I was enabled to endure her prose with great equanimity. But she expected me to reply--now, as I did not care to keep my hand in for my next romance, I viewed her claims as extravagant and unreasonable, and feigning a strong desire to see my mother, I fled, less curious than Lot's wife, without looking behind. Had I not taken this resolution I should have died of ennui in that dimly-lighted house, among those sepulchral toys, in the presence of that pale phantom enveloped in a dismal wrapper, cut in the monkish style, and speaking in a trembling and languishing tone of voice. La Trappe or Chartreuse would have been preferable--I would have gained at least my salvation. Although it may be the act of a Cossack, a shocking irregularity, I have given her no sign of my existence, except that I told her that my mother's recovery promised to be very slow, and she would need the devoted attention of a good son.