sea. It may break in upon him at any time, as the grace of God found
St. Paul; and a man may live sixty years and never know love. Perhaps,
to quote Heine's superb phrase, it is 'the secret malady of the heart'
--a sense of the Infinite that there is within us, together with the
revelation of the ideal Beauty in its visible form. This love, in
short, comprehends both the creature and creation. But so long as
there is no question of this great poetical conception, the loves that
cannot last can only be taken lightly, as if they were in a manner
snatches of song compared with Love the epic.

"To Charles Edward the adventure brought neither the thunderbolt
signal of love's coming, nor yet that gradual revelation of an inward
fairness which draws two natures by degrees more and more strongly
each to each. For there are but two ways of love--love at first sight,
doubtless akin to the Highland 'second-sight,' and that slow fusion of
two natures which realizes Plato's 'man-woman.' But if Charles Edward
did not love, he was loved to distraction. Claudine found love made
complete, body and soul; in her, in short, La Palferine awakened the
one passion of her life; while for him Claudine was only a most
charming mistress. The Devil himself, a most potent magician
certainly, with all hell at his back, could never have changed the
natures of these two unequal fires. I dare affirm that Claudine not
unfrequently bored Charles Edward.

"'Stale fish and the woman you do not love are only fit to fling out
of the window after three days,' he used to say.

"In Bohemia there is little secrecy observed over these affairs. La
Palferine used to talk a good deal of Claudine; but, at the same time,
none of us saw her, nor so much as knew her name. For us Claudine was