Cannot the friendship of Mademoiselle de Gournay and Montaigne be revived in us?
Do you not remember the household of Sismonde de Sismondi in Geneva?
The most lovely home ever known, as I have been told; something like that of the Marquis de Pescaire and his wife,--happy to old age.

Ah! friend, is it impossible that two hearts, two harps, should exist as in a symphony, answering each other from a distance, vibrating with delicious melody in unison?
Man alone of all creation is in himself the harp, the musician, and the listener.

Do you think to find me uneasy and jealous like ordinary women?
I know that you go into the world and meet the handsomest and the wittiest women in Paris.

May I not suppose that some one of those mermaids has deigned to clasp you in her cold and scaly arms, and that she has inspired the answer whose prosaic opinions sadden me?
There is something in life more beautiful than the garlands of Parisian coquetry; there grows a flower far up those Alpine peaks called men of genius, the glory of humanity, which they fertilize with the dews their lofty heads draw from the skies.

I seek to cultivate that flower and make it bloom; for its wild yet gentle fragrance can never fail,--it is eternal.
Do me the honor to believe that there is nothing low or commonplace in me.