where blue roses bloom in vases of alabaster...

where the perspectives are all enchanted...

where they walk with naked feet upon the thick green moss, soft as carpets of velvet...

where all sing as they wander among the fragrant groves." [Footnote: LETTRES D'UN VOYAGEUR] She knew these unknown friends so well that after having again seen them, "she could not dream of them without palpitations of the heart during the whole day." She was initiated into the Hoffmannic world--"she who had surprised such ineffable smiles upon the portraits of the dead;" [Footnote: SPIRIDSON] who had seen the rays of the sun falling through the stained glass of a Gothic window form a halo round loved heads, like the arm of God, luminous and impalpable, surrounded by a vortex of atoms;--she who had known such glorious apparitions, clothed with the purple and golden glories of the setting sun.

The realm of fantasy had no myth with whose secret she was not familiar! Thus she was naturally anxious to become acquainted with one who had with rapid wing flown "to those scenes which it is impossible to describe, but which must exist somewhere, either upon the earth, or in some of the planets, whose light we love to gaze upon in the forests when the moon has set." [Footnote: LETTRES D'UN VOYAGEUR] Such scenes she had prayed never to be forced to desert--never desiring to bring her heart and imagination back to this dreary world, too like the gloomy coasts of Finland, where the slime and miry slough can only be escaped by scaling the naked granite of the solitary rocks.