That is the story of my relations with Miss Ives. As I finish telling it, it seems to me as though I were losing a second Charlotte in the same island in which I lost the first. But between that which I feel at this moment and that which I felt at the hours whose tenderness I have recalled lies the whole space of innocence: passions have interposed themselves between Miss Ives and Lady Sutton. I could no longer bring to an artless woman the candour of desire, the sweet ignorance of a love that did not surpass the limits of a dream. I was writing then on the wave of sadness; I am now no longer tossed on the wave of life. Well, if I had pressed in my arms, as a wife and a mother, her who was destined for me as a virgin and a bride, it would have been with a sort of rage, to blight, to fill with sorrow, to crush out of existence those seven-and-twenty years which had been given to another after having been offered to me. I must look upon the sentiment which I have just recalled as the first of that kind which entered my heart; it was nevertheless in no way sympathetic with my stormy nature: the latter would have corrupted it and made me incapable of long enjoying such sacred delectations. It was then that, embittered as I was by misfortunes, already a pilgrim from beyond the seas, having begun my solitary travels, it was then that I became obsessed by the mad ideas depicted in the mystery of René, which turned me into the most tormented being on the face of the earth. However that may be, the chaste image of Charlotte, by causing a few rays of true light to penetrate to the depths of my soul, at first dissipated a cloud of phantoms: my dæmon, like an evil genius, plunged back into the abyss, and awaited the effects of time in order to renew her apparitions. * My relations with Deboffe in connection with the _Essai sur les révolutions_ had never been completely interrupted, and it was important for me to resume them in London at the earliest possible moment to support my material existence. But whence had my last misfortune arisen? From my obstinate bent for silence. In order to understand this it is necessary to enter into my character. At no time of my life have I been able to overcome the spirit of reticence and of mental solitude which prevents me from talking of my private affairs. [Sidenote: My reserved nature.]