Oh this charming, this unfortunate Cecilia! How I love and pity her! and the poor Chevalier de Murville, how I admire him also! I am sorry, however, he is not dead. I expected that the casket, containing Cecilia's hair, would be returned, with an interesting letter written on his death-bed; this seems to be all that is wanting to complete the melancholy tale. This despairing, this passionate lover, to live so long! … In spite of myself, I am tormented with the idea that he may be now living at his ease in some remote corner of the world. Perhaps attached to some other object; and if he has made a sacrifice of the hair! oh, the monster! … He has no other way of justifying himself but sending it back instantly. But really now, have you not an earnest desire to know what is become of him? I have already composed ten or twelve Romances on this subject, every one more affecting than the preceding. Cecilia is going to leave the convent for some months; they will see each other again. Faintings, congratulations, &c. &c. ensue! … or else she herself will receive her own hair with a most pathetic letter … My opinion is, that he has never quitted France; for how could he tear himself from a country inhabited by Cecilia? He lives here disguised, concealed perhaps at la Trappe, or possibly is turned hermit. In short, I cannot help thinking that we shall soon hear what is become of him. But to return to the commission with which I am charged. The very day I received your letter, I wrote a note to Madame d’ Olcy, to beg a private interview with her; and the next day I went to wait on her. They conducted me through a long and superbe suite of apartments, at the end of which I found her in an elegant little room, seated on a sofa, and carelessly reading a pamphlet, which I believe she had only taken up on hearing a carriage enter the court-yard.