As soon as I was alone I reflected with a secret satisfaction that the Princess Amelie, after seeing my portrait, painted five or six years ago, had inquired after “her cousin of the olden time.”
Nothing could be more absurd than to build the slightest hope on so trivial a circumstance, I acknowledge; but I always treat you with the most perfect confidence, and I acknowledge that this trifling circumstance delighted me.
No doubt the praise I had just heard bestowed on the princess by so grave and austere a person as my aunt, by raising her in my estimation, rendered this circumstance more agreeable.
Why should I tell you? The hopes I conceived from this trifling event were so mad that, now that I look back more calmly on the past, I ask myself how I could have indulged in ideas that mus
