CHAPTER VIII.
LETTER FROM ISAURA CICOGNA TO MADAME DE GRANTMESNIL.
VILLA D'-- ---, A------.
I can never express to you, my beloved Eulalie, the strange charm which a letter from you throws over my poor little lonely world for days after it is received.

There is always in it something that comforts, something that sustains, but also a something that troubles and disquiets me.
I suppose Goethe is right, "that it is the property of true genius to disturb all settled ideas," in order, no doubt, to lift them into a higher level when they settle down again.
Your sketch of the new work you are meditating amid the orange groves of Provence interests me intensely; yet, do you forgive me when I add that the interest is not without terror?
I do not find myself able to comprehend how, amid those lovely scenes of Nature, your mind voluntarily surrounds itself with images of pain and discord.

I stand in awe of the calm with which you subject to your analysis the infirmities of reason and the tumults of passion.

And all those laws of the social state which seem to me so fixed and immovable you treat with so quiet a scorn, as if they were but the gossamer threads which a touch of your slight woman's hand could brush away.

But I cannot venture to discuss such subjects with you.