"Let me pour out my follies, dear Emile; to-day I am barely twenty-six
years old, certain of dying unrecognized, and I have never been the
lover of the woman I dreamed of possessing. Have we not all of us,
more or less, believed in the reality of a thing because we wished it?
I would never have a young man for my friend who did not place himself
in dreams upon a pedestal, weave crowns for his head, and have
complaisant mistresses. I myself would often be a general, nay,
emperor; I have been a Byron, and then a nobody. After this sport on
these pinnacles of human achievement, I became aware that all the
difficulties and steeps of life were yet to face. My exuberant
self-esteem came to my aid; I had that intense belief in my destiny,
which perhaps amounts to genius in those who will not permit themselves
to be distracted by contact with the world, as sheep that leave their
wool on the briars of every thicket they pass by. I meant to cover
myself with glory, and to work in silence for the mistress I hoped to
have one day. Women for me were resumed into a single type, and this
woman I looked to meet in the first that met my eyes; but in each and
all I saw a queen, and as queens must make the first advances to their
lovers, they must draw near to me--to me, so sickly, shy, and poor.
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