delightful intimacy with them, wholly absorbed in deciphering the enigma of their hearts, have known and felt these singular perplexities. One day the ladies have enchanted me, almost given me wings; another, they have crushed me into the dust: one day I would fain kiss their hands with all the ardour of a loyal worshipper; another, long to obliterate their very footprints. Sometimes I have glowed with pride, fancying myself master of this fervent love of which they used to speak so well; and thrilled through and through with their overflowing enthusiasm I have seen the world become transfigured behind them, our pale northern mists dissolve in radiant colour, our sky become translucent—and next day I would trudge mechanically behind them in utter mystification. Passion and irony have in turn moved my pen, and having mutually slain each other, I know not whether anything is left. And to-day even, when I am seeking earnestly to lisp the praises of these ladies, when as the prize of serious and constant effort I beseech of them some positive pledge of their thought, they flit like butterflies before me! Yet they had hearts, large hearts, it is impossible to doubt,—hearts staunch and ardent; but they shrank from employing them. They dallied in a dim twilight sensibility, like that noble lady of Genoa, Thomasina Spinola, who had broken all material ties with her husband in order to devote her thoughts to King Louis XII. One day the rumour spread, falsely, that Louis was dead, and soon it was reported at Blois that Thomasina was dead also. Thereupon the official poet recited an interminable elegy. Happily, both Louis XII. and Thomasina had many years to live. No one durst smile at matters so eminently respectable, though Anne of France was indignant; in her opinion love was dishonoured by such proceedings, and she would readily have forgiven men for not taking these pleasant comedies too seriously. Strange women! Perhaps they themselves dared not probe their souls! The artists who painted them must have dropped their brush and peered into the heart of their idol, and asked themselves whether it was a Beatrice or a Venus they were painting. A strange veil covers their features; as a skilful artist contents himself with vague suggestions where a perfect rendering is impossible, so their souls have deliberately blotted themselves in mist, blurring their outlines, and throwing us into uncertainty. These women are frank, and reserved; they attract, and repel; embrace us, and hold us at arm’s length; allure us, and alienate us. Now they are like virgin soil, now like paths too many feet have trod. Their contemporaries were baffled by them; we too may well fail to comprehend this platonism—we who see it from afar.