"At least it was brief and the commencement, middle and end took three months. There are many days to revive in this trilogy of zodiacs. Thus, that first meeting which she, the traitress, recalled herself, yesterday evening. Residual sensations still vibrate in my nerves and I hear "the wind pass, stirring the dry leaves." May they sound in your ears, too, Sixtine, and may the sound of their pursuit sadden, like the tattoo of a rattle-snake, the "delicate landscape" where moves your captive soul! You asked to be plundered, treasure: well! now you are a prisoner of the flesh, adore your prison, your chains, and your jailer. "This journey was for me the occasion of a return to my youth: these renewals are anthologies, but what if it were necessary to re-read the entire book, letter by letter! Oh! no, oh! no. And no more than the vendor of _almanachs de Leopardi_, will I give my consent: 'Oh! no! but another, monsieur, one quite new!' Ah! oxydized hearts aspiring after the virginity of a new stamp, you will fall into the crucible! Ah! patience, we shall enjoy the devouring liquefaction: and our molecules will return into the matrix and other coins of divinity will continue our broken circulation,--other coins eternally the same! "Wretched logic: these three months of my life are dominated by an absurdity which will decide its disposition, like a lunar play in an old, used mirror. "Sixtine, it will be good of you to tell me that legend, now that you no longer need reserve the charm of mysteries, this one and the other, you know which one, that of the poison!--Ah! to think that I shall never know it,--no more than the color of your eyes when they open to the morning light. "When I returned to 'my enlarged room,' it was finished, you possessed me. But know that it was not without inward struggles and that many affections, already old, divided a large and profound heart. Also learn that at that time Madame du Boys was not without attractions for me, in her so ingenuously perverse naivete,--and had you not come, I should have made perhaps another little trip with her to Switzerland. Ah! but you have aped her! Sixtine, has your dignity consented to a surreptitious abduction? Send me a bouquet of violets by post!... I should have taught you the play of transcendental pleasantries, and you would have liked it. You are too serious, you really effect too much! You mistake accident for destiny; it is only a fragment. Shake off, then, the dust of eternity which illusion has sprinkled on your wings! Have you taken at least a return ticket? It is economical and gives a value to the landscape, for, without this precaution, one would never think of looking at it. 'We have plenty of time!'"