I have read your last verses in the "Revue,"-- ah! with what delight, now that I am initiated in the austere loftiness of your secret soul.
Will it make you unhappy to know that a young girl prays for you; that you are her solitary thought,--without a rival except in her father and mother?
Can there be any reason why you should reject these pages full of you, written for you, seen by no eye but yours?
Send me their counterpart.

I am so little of a woman yet that your confidences--provided they are full and true--will suffice for the happiness of your O.d'Este M.
"Good heavens! can I be in love already ?" cried the young secretary, when he perceived that he had held the above letter in his hands more than an hour after reading it.

"What shall I do?
She thinks she is writing to the great poet! Can I continue the deception?
Is she a woman of forty, or a girl of twenty ?" Ernest was now fascinated by the great gulf of the unseen.

The unseen is the obscurity of infinitude, and nothing is more alluring.

In that sombre vastness fires flash, and furrow and color the abyss with fancies like those of Martin.