"But I have a copy."
"You? Where?"
"In my heart, mon cher enfant. Why should I not remember the great poet's words? 'Dearest brother-in-arms—Never have I found in any other but you so much passion united with so much clairvoyance in action. You have truly the divine right of autocracy. I only feel a humble fly....'" She paused and smiled at him. "You see."
"Perfect," cried Lassalle, who had been listening complacently. "But it's not that letter. The letter of introduction he gave me to Varnhagen von Ense when I was a boy of twenty—in the year we met."
"How should I not remember that? Was it not the first you showed me?"
A sigh escaped her. In that year when he had won her love, she had been just twice as old as he. Now, despite arithmetic, she felt three times his age.
"I will dictate it to you," she went on; "and you can send it to the publisher and be done with it."
"My rare Countess, my more than mother," he said, touched, "that you should have carried all that in your dear, wise head."
"'My friend, Herr Lassalle, the bearer of this letter, is a young man of extraordinary talent. To the most profound erudition and the greatest insight and the richest gifts of expression, he unites—'"
"Doesn't it also say, 'that I have ever met?'"