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you would not have done thus. You see how freely I write, and how proudly. Write you with all freedom, but with your enchanting humility! "Je suis glorieuse d'être votre amie." That is the stile. Is not this a long letter? You must not expect me to write regularly. Farewell, my dear Zélide. Heaven bless you, and make you rationaly happy. Farewell.

This letter, I need scarcely remark, is one of Boswell's most characteristic performances. I have known young ladies to become virtuously indignant over it. There is not in it, we may admit, that note of chivalry which is supposed to indicate a noble devotion to the sex. And yet, when allowance is made for the insolence of it all, for its pomposity and its sermonising, I do not believe that Zélide was displeased with it. Did she not keep it as long as she lived? The very jumble of the sentences in the postscript is eloquent. "I don't understand a word of your mystery of a certain gentleman whom you think of three times a day. What do you mean by it? Berlin is a most delightfull city. I am quite happy. I love you more than ever." If Zélide did not realise that the creature was trapped, she must have been devoid of feminine instinct. If she wanted Boswell, she had but to stoop and pick him up.

For some excellent feminine reason she decided

not to take him at the moment. She was not sure. There were other candidates. And then there was the thought of living in Scotland, which Boswell had done nothing to make attractive to her. It was safe to postpone the whole affair. But she did not neglect him. She continued to write to him, as we know from the fact that Boswell laid her letters before the philosophic gaze of Rous

seau.

During my melancholy at Utrecht [he wrote in December to Rousseau] I made the acquaintance of a young woman of the highest nobility, and very rich. I conducted myself in such a way as to win the reputation of a philosopher. Ah, how deceptive are appearances! If you care to amuse yourself by reading some pieces by this young lady, you will find them in a small, separate parcel. I should like to have your sentiments on her character. You are the only one to whom I have showed her papers. I could entrust to you anything in the world [vous confier tout au monde].

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Perhaps Rousseau could not have done better than to advise Boswell to win Zélide as fast as ever he could. Just why James feared her vivacity is not clear perhaps it was because she did not have complete respect for the conventions of society. But neither did he. Marrying a girl with the same faults that you have yourself has at least this advantage, that they will not come to

her with a shock of painful novelty, or become an increasing burden with the years. There are people (very modern people) who fancy that Benedick and Beatrice quarrelled and separated soon after their marriage. Certainly they were too wise to live after the conventional standards set by Claudio and Hero. At any rate, I have never heard of any one who thought that they were likely to perish of dulness and boredom. We may quarrel with people constituted like ourselves, but we have also the priceless means of understanding them. Boswell missed the opportunity to marry a girl who understood him. Had they married, she might very probably not have contrived to make of him a steadier or a better man; but I do not think she would have blushed for him. The Boswell family has always been ashamed of the only genius that ever adorned it—a temptation which Zélide, with her more liberal training and temper, might have been depended upon to withstand.

And so Boswell saw Zélide no more. But he could not soon forget her, and she will appear again in our story.

In "sweet Siena," Boswell encountered an "Italian Signora," of a more than earthly beauty, no doubt, who detained him there long after he should have been off to Corsica. Of her we know nothing.

But we do know that the whole problem of our hero's relations with the sex was laid before Paoli; that he gave the finest advice, and also promised Boswell that, if he would return in twenty years, he would find in Corsica, not only science and art, but ladies as splendid as those in any Parisian salon.

CHAPTER VII

WOOING A WIFE

In the little village of Adamtown, not far from Auchinleck, there lived, in the year 1767, a widow by the name of Blair. Her daughter Kate, the heir to the fortune which had been left by the late Mr. Blair, was eighteen years of age, and described, after the manner of the period, as being sensible, cheerful, and pious, and of a countenance which, though not beautiful, was agreeable." During her minority her relative, the Laird of Auchinleck, had been one of her guardians; and of a Sunday she sat dutifully in the Master's pew of the little church on the estate.

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In the eyes of the young Boswell, just home from his travels, this Scots cousin of his was the finest woman he had ever seen, and her charms were in no way injured by the fact that she possessed great wealth. What a Mistress of Auchinleck she would make! Her picture would adorn the family gallery "Catherine, wife of James Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck." Her children would be as clever as their father (or his friend, the Reverend William Temple), and as charming as their mother. Here, at any rate, was a flame of

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