Letters from Paris furrowed my
mind like steamers the waters of a lake, made it foam, and the waves run
high, left long streaks across its wake. Not that Mlle. Mathilde sent
letters to me herself, but her Italian lady and gentlemen friends wrote
for her, apparently in her name, loudly lamenting my unreasonable
departure, wishing and demanding my return, telling me how she missed
me, sometimes how angry she was.
I was too poor to be able to return at once. I did what I could to
procure money, wrote to those of my friends whom I thought could best
afford it and on whom I relied most, but met with refusals, which made
me think of the messages Timon of Athens received in response to similar
requests. Then I staked in the lottery and did not win.
Urged from France to return, and under the high pressure of my own
romantic imagination, it seemed clear to me all at once that I ought to
unite my lot for good to that of this rare and beautiful woman, whom, it
is true, I had never spoken to one minute alone, who, moreover, had
scarcely anything in common with me, but who, just by the dissimilarity
of her having been born of Spanish parents in Rio, and I of a Danish
father and mother in Copenhagen, seemed destined by Fate for me, as I
for her. The Palm and the Fir-tree had dreamed of one another, and could
never meet; but men and women could, however far apart they might have
been born.
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