three hours after
midnight
La Marquise contemplates reform , romances , social poetry , humanitarian and palingenesic treatises , and scattered about on the tables and chairs were to be seen solemn old books , dog-leaved at their most tiresome pages , all of which is very appalling . Nothing is more convenient than a muse whose complete works are printed ; one knows then what to expect , and you have not always the reading of Damocles hanging over your head . Dragged by a fatality that so often makes me the victim of women I do not admire , I became the Conrad , the Lara of this Byronic heroine . Every morning she sent me folio-sized epistles , dated three hours after midnight . They were compilations from Frederick Soulié , Eugene Sue , and Alexander Dumas , glorious authors , whom I delight to read save in my amorous correspondence , where a feminine mistake in orthography gives me more pleasure than a phrase plagiarised from George Sand , or a pathetic tirade stolen from a popular dramatist . In short , I do not believe in a passion told in language that smells of the lamp ; and the expression '' _ Je t ` aime _ '' will scarcely persuade me if it be not written '' _ Je thême _ . '' It made no difference how often the beauty wrote , I fortified myself against her literary visitations by consigning her billets-doux unopened to an empty drawer .