There is as much again, but this is enough. Madame de Krüdener's letter ends: "I send you this elegy, the antique colouring (!) and beauty of which I admire. I appropriate nothing in it except the sorrow, which you have correctly observed in me and have desired to alleviate. I have much more than this to say to you, dear Dr. Gay, much that is more flattering for you, but I cannot find room for it here, can only with a grateful heart offer my thanks to your art, your noble art, so beneficial to humanity (!)."
Dr. Gay then proceeded to rhyme his prose. Madame de Krüdener writes to him: "Sidonie has requested me to convey her heartfelt thanks to the kindest of friends. The verses are charming. They are already in print. What an enviably gifted man he is who wrote them! How easy it is to see that he is Sidonie's friend! How well he paints what he desires us to see! In every stroke one feels that it is the soul which has wielded the brush--and what a noble soul!... Sidonie has also received an elegy in prose, which you must see, and which she considers exceedingly beautiful. What talent is displayed in the noble, simple style, and how one is drawn to the mind which speaks such a language! A few alterations have been made, very few; you have been most successful in doing what was desired!"
We observe that Sidonie was not content with writing out a rough draft of her own encomiums, but that she also corrected the fair copy. Such proceedings require no comment. The indefatigable doctor composes more poems, and receives requests to plague this, that, and the other critic. No importuning was required in the case of the pious historian, Michaud, who spent thirty years of his life in writing the history of the Crusades; it was rendered superfluous by the intimacy of his relations with the authoress; his criticism was an enthusiastic one. At last Madame de Krüdener is able to write to a friend: "My health is much improved; I have been at balls eight nights running without being the worse for it. What happiness! I cannot tell you, my friend, how much I am made of; poems are showered on me, I am overwhelmed with attentions, people dispute the privilege of a word with me. It is a thousand times more than I deserve; but _Providence loves to overwhelm its children with benefits_, even when they do not deserve them.... I should look upon it as cowardice not to publish a work which in my opinion is a useful one; therefore I regard the journey to Paris in the light of _a duty_; for my heart, my imagination, everything, draws me to the Lake of Geneva."