“Idiot! why did you leave? You might have seen her again to-morrow.” True, but the fear of being troublesome restrained me and what could I have done in Lyons during the hours we were apart? it would have been but torture. After a few miserable days of indecision in Paris I wrote the following letter, which shows my deplorable state and her beautiful calm. How much worse off am I now that I cannot even write to her! To enjoy that romantic friendship to the end would have been too great a blessing. Wounded, torn, alone, unsatisfied must I totter to my grave! “PARIS, _27th September 1864_.--Madame! A thousand blessings on you for your gentle reception of me! Few women could have done as much; yet since our meeting, I suffer most cruelly. It is useless to repeat to myself that you could not have done more than you have; my wounded heart bleeds on unstaunched. I ask, why? why? and my only answer is: because I saw you so little; because I said but a tithe of all I wished; because we parted as if for ever. “Yet I held your hand, I pressed it to my lips--to my forehead and kept back my tears as I had promised. “And now the inexorable thirst for another word from you has conquered me; in pity grant it! “Think! for forty-five years I have loved you; you are my childhood’s dream that has weathered all the storms of my most stormy life. It _must_ be true--this love of a life-time--could it, else, master me as it still does? “Do not take me for an eccentric, a plaything of my own imagination; I am but a man of intense sensibility, of eternal constancy and of overwhelmingly strong affections. I loved you, I love you still, I shall always love you, although I am sixty-one and for me the world has no more illusions. “Grant me, I pray you, not as a nurse, from a sense of duty to her sick patient, but as a noble woman stooping to heal wounds she has unwittingly given--grant me those three things that, alone, can give me peace: permission to write sometimes, your undertaking to reply and a promise that once a year, at least, you will allow me to visit you. “If I called without your permission I might arrive at the wrong time, therefore I shall not venture near you unless you say: ‘Come.’ “Surely there is nothing strange or wrong in this? Could there be a purer or more beautiful bond? Who shall say us nay? Still, I must own that it would be painful to meet you only amongst others, therefore if you bid me come it will be that we may talk as we did last Friday when, so deeply was I moved, that I could not savour the sweet sad charm by reason of my terror lest emotion should get beyond control. Oh, madame! madame! I have but one end in life--to gain your affection!