Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LETTERS TO ANONYMA Paris, Thursday.— Everything about you is mysterious; and the causes inducing in others a certain line of conduct, impel you always to opposite action. I am becoming accustomed to your ways, and nothing any longer surprises me. Spare me, I beg of you ; do not put to too harsh a test the unfortunate habit I have contracted of finding good in all that you do. I was perhaps a little too frank in my last letter, in speaking of my character. An old diplomatist, a shrewd man of the world, has often advised me, " Never say any ill of yourself ; your dear friends will say quite enough." Do not, however, take literally my self-depreciation; believe, rather, that my chief virtue is modesty, which I carry to excess, and I tremble lest it injure me in your estimation. I may at another time, when inspired, supply you with an exact catalogue of my qualities; for the list will be long, and being to-day slightly indisposed I dare not project myself into this " progression of the infinite." You cannot guess where I was on Saturday evening, and in what engaged at midnight. I was on the platform of one of the towers of Notre Dame, drinking orangeade and eating ices in the society of four friends and a magnificent moon, with the accompaniment of a great owl flapping his wings. Paris at this hour, and by moonlight, is a superb spectacle, resembling a city of the " Thousand and One Nights," the inhabitants of which have been enchanted during their sleep ; but Parisians usually go to bed at midnight, and are most stupid in so doing. Our party was a curious one, four nations being represented, each of us with a different way of thinking; but the bore of it was, that some of us, inspired by the moon and the owl, thought it necessary to assume a poetic tone and indulge in platitudes —...