My thoughts were busy enough upon subjects which were destined to grow more and more painful under reflection. The first feelings to which I gave way were those of pure sorrow at parting with Laura de Villardin; and I felt, for the first time in my life, that faint sickness of heart, which I suppose every one feels in separating from a being so dear--that sensation of a deprivation and a void--that oppressive sense of the uncertainty of fate, which may ever throw so many obstacles in our way, ere we can again behold those that we so deeply love. Such feelings are painful enough in themselves; but I soon began to inquire their cause. I had been longer negligent in examining my own heart, and in tracing the latent causes of all that was working in it, than I had been for many years; but the magic which had withheld my thoughts from every other subject, and which had cast a veil over every other sensation, was now lost; and my mind naturally turned to inquire what was the real cause of all those new and mingled feelings, which, for six weeks, had been a source of such joy, and which now had left me full of sad thoughts and melancholy forebodings. The truth was no longer to be concealed: the very pain I felt at quitting Laura de Villardin told me that I loved her--the very depression of spirits, and distaste for the career before me--a career which had formerly occupied all my thoughts and wishes--now showed me where my hopes and pleasures all centred; and repeated, in language that I could not doubt, that I loved, and loved too deeply ever to forget. Such a certainty, under some circumstances, might have so mingled hope and expectation with all the anxieties and apprehensions which follow every strong passion, that the whole would still have remained a pleasant dream to cheer me on upon the path of exertion and enterprise; but, situated as I was, the tardy discovery alone exposed to my sight a prospect of disappointment and despair. What could I hope?--what could I expect? I, a poor adventurer, with but the two recommendations of personal courage and noble birth; I, whose whole possessions on earth were owing to the generosity of others--whose way to fame and distinction had been opened by their kind endeavours--could I hope to win the heiress of one of the noblest houses and of the most splendid fortunes in all France; I, who had been her father's page; who owed him everything--fortune, station, and the means of gaining renown. Oh! what I would have given at that moment to have had the power of changing her I loved into the daughter of some poor gentleman, who would have gladly bestowed her without a portion.