To what distressed soul did it lend its aid? Some anxious mother watching and praying beside her sick child, or some youthful student plunging with stern delight into the arcana of science, to wrest from the revealing spirits of the night some luminous truth? But while the poet questioned death and the past, I questioned the living present, and more than once the distant beacon seemed to answer me. I even imagined that this busy light flickered in concert with mine, and that they brightened and faded in unison. I could only see it through a thick foliage of trees, for a large garden planted with poplars, pines and sycamores separated the house where I had taken refuge from the tall building whence the beacon shone for me night after night. As I could never succeed in finding the points of the compass, I was ignorant of the exact locality of the house, or even on what street it fronted, and knew nothing of its occupants. But still this light was a friend; it spoke a sympathetic language to my eyes--it said: "Courage! you do not suffer alone; behind these trees and under those stars there is one who watches, labors, dreams." And when the night was majestic and beautiful, when the morn rose slowly in the azure sky, like a radiant host offered by the invisible hand of God to the adoration of the faithful who pray, lament and die by night; when these ever-new splendors dazzled my troubled soul; when I felt myself seized with that poignant admiration which makes solitary hearts find almost grief in joys that cannot be shared, it seemed to me that a dear voice came to calm my excitement, and exclaimed, with fervor, "Is not the night beautiful? What happiness in enjoying it together!" When the nightingale, deceived by the silence of the deserted spot, and attracted by these dark shades, became a Parisian for a few days, rejuvenating with his vernal songs the old echoes of the city, again it seemed that the same voice whispered softly through the trembling leaves: "He sings, come listen!" So the sad nights glided peacefully away, comforted by these foolish reveries. Then I invoked my dear ideal, beloved shadow, protector of every honest heart, proud dream, a perfect choice, a jealous love sometimes making all other love impossible! Oh, my beautiful ideal! Must I then say farewell? Now I no longer dare to invoke thee!... But what folly! Why am I so silly as to permit the remembrance of an ideal to haunt me like a remorse? Why do I suffer it to make me unjust towards noble and generous qualities that I should worthily appreciate? Do not laugh at me, Valentine, when I assure you that my greatest distress is that my lover does not resemble in any respect my ideal, and I am provoked that I love him--I cannot deceive myself, the contrast is striking--judge for yourself. You may laugh if you will, but the whole secret of my distress is the contrast between these two portraits.