Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 5.djvu/263

Rh girl, smiling in a mischievous way, "but would you be so kind as to read it?"

Lisabeta glanced and saw that Hermann begged her to meet him.

"It is impossible!" she cried, frightened at the request itself and at the way it had been delivered. " I tell you this letter is not for me."

And with that, she tore it into bits.

"If that letter is not for you. Mademoiselle, then why did you tear it up?" continued the milliner's apprentice. "You should have sent it back to the one for whom it was intended."

"Oh! forgive me, dear child," said Lisabeta in dismay; "I beg of you never to bring me any more letters, and tell him who sent you that he ought to be ashamed of himself."

But Hermann was not a man to be easily discouraged. Every day Lisabeta received a letter in some way or other, and these were not German translations either. Hermann wrote under the stimulus of an ardent passion, and spoke a language with which he was familiar. Lisabeta could not hold out very long before this flood of eloquence. She eventually received the letters with pleasure and before long answered them. Each day the answers grew longer and were more affectionate. Finally, one day, she threw him at the window the following note: