me good-bye? why did he come alone to see me? and why did he not allude
to my approaching return to Paris?--why did he not say he would be glad
to meet me again? How pale and sad he was! and yet he uttered not one
word of regret--of distant hope! The servant said: "Monsieur de Villiers
wishes to see madame, shall I send him away as I did Monsieur de
Meilhan?" I was in the garden and advanced to meet him. He said: "I
return to Paris to-morrow, madame, and have come to see if you have any
commands, and to bid you good-bye."

Two long days had passed since I last saw him, and this unexpected visit
startled me so that I was afraid to trust my voice to speak. "They will
miss you very much at Richeport," he added, "and Madame de Meilhan hopes
daily to see you return." I hastily said: "I cannot return to her
house, I am going away from here very soon." He did not ask where, but
gazed at me in a strange, almost suspicious way, and to change the
conversation, said: "We had at Richeport, after you left, a charming
man, who is celebrated for his wit and for being a great traveller--the
Prince de Monbert." ... He spoke as if on an indifferent subject, and
Heaven knows he was right, for Roger at this moment interested me very,
very little. I waited for a word of the future, a ray of hope to
brighten my life, another of those tender glances that thrilled my soul
with joy ... but he avoided all allusion to our past intercourse; he
shunned my looks as carefully as he had formerly sought them.... I was
alarmed.... I no longer understood him.... I looked around to see if we
were not watched, so changed was his manner, so cold and formal was his
speech.... Strange! I was alone with him, but he was not alone with me;
there was a third person between us, invisible to me, but to him
visible, dictating his words and inspiring his conduct.

"Shall you remain long in Paris?" I asked, trembling and dismayed. "I am
not decided at present, madame," he replied. Irritated by this mystery,
I was tempted for a moment to say: "I hope, if you remain in Paris for
any length of time, I shall have the pleasure of seeing you at my
cousin's, the Duchess de Langeac," and then I thought of telling him my
story. I was tired of playing the rôle of adventuress before him ... but
he seemed so preoccupied, and inattentive to what I said, he so coldly
received my affectionate overtures, that I had not the courage to
confide in him. Would not my confidence be met with indifference? One
thing consoled me--his sadness; and then he had come, not on my account,
but on his own; nothing obliged him to make this visit; it could only
have been inspired by a wish to see me. While he remained near me, in
spite of his strange indifference, I had hope; I believed that in his
farewell there would be one kind word upon which I could live till we
should meet again ... I was mistaken ... he bowed and left me ... left
me without a word ...! Then I felt that all was lost, and bursting into
tears sobbed like a child. Suddenly the servant opened the door and
said: "The gentleman forgot Madame de Meilhan's letters." At that moment
he entered the room and took from the table a packet of letters that the
servant had given him when he first came, but which he had forgotten
when leaving. At the sight of my tears he stood still with an agitated,
alarmed look upon his face; he then gazed at me with a singular
expression of cruel joy sparkling in his eyes. I thought he had come
back to say something to me, but he abruptly left the room. I heard the
door shut, and knew it had shut off my hopes of happiness.

The next day, at the risk of meeting Edgar with him, I remained all day
on the road that runs along the Seine. I hoped he would go that way. I
also hoped he would come once more to see me ... to bring him back I
relied upon my tears--upon those tears shed for him, and which he must
have understood ... he came not! Three days have passed since he left,
and I spend all my time in recalling this last interview, what he said
to me, his tone of voice, his look.... One minute I find an explanation
for everything, my faith revives ... he loves me! he is waiting for
something to happen, he wishes to take some step, he fears some
obstacle, he waits to clear up some doubts ... a generous scruple
restrains him.... The next minute the dreadful truth stares me in the
face. I say to myself: "He is a young man full of imagination, of
romantic ideas ... we met, I pleased him, he would have loved me had I
belonged to his station in life; but everything separates us; he will
forget me." ... Then, revolting against a fate that I can successfully
resist, I exclaim: "I _will_ see him again ... I am young, free, and
beautiful--I must be beautiful, for he told me so--I have an income of a
hundred thousand pounds.... With all these blessings it would be absurd
for me not to be happy. Besides, I love him deeply, and this ardent love
inspires me with great confidence ... it is impossible that so much love
should be born in my heart for no purpose." ... Sometimes this
confidence deserts me, and I despairingly say: "M. de Villiers is a
loyal man, who would have frankly said to me: 'I love you, love me and
let us be happy.'" ... Since he did not say that, there must exist
between us an insurmountable obstacle, a barrier of invincible delicacy;
because he is engaged he cannot devote his life to me, and he must
renounce me for ever. M. de Meilhan comes here every day; I send word I
am too sick to see him; which is the truth, for I would be in Paris now
if I were well enough to travel. I shall not return by the cars, I dread
meeting Roger. I forgot to tell you about his arrival at Richeport; it
is an amusing story; I laughed very much at the time; _then_ I could
laugh, now I never expect to smile again.

Four days ago, I was at Richeport, all the time wishing to leave, and
always detained by Mad. de Meilhan; it was about noon, and we were all
sitting in the parlor--Edgar, M. de Villiers, Mad. de Meilhan and
myself. Ah! how happy I was that day ... How could I foresee any
trouble?... They were listening to an air I was playing from Bellini ...
A servant entered and asked this simple question: "Does madame expect
the Prince de Monbert by the twelve o'clock train?"..... At this name I
quickly fled, without stopping to pick up the piano stool that I
overturned in my hurried retreat. I ran to my room, took my hat and an
umbrella to hide my face should I meet any one, and walked to Pont de
l'Arche. Soon after I heard the Prince had arrived, and dinner was
ordered for five o'clock, so he could leave in the 7.30 train.
Politeness required me to send word to Mad. de Meilhan that I would be
detained at Pont de l'Arche. To avoid the entreaties of Edgar I took
refuge at the house of an old fishwoman, near the gate of the town. She
is devoted to me, and I often take her children toys and clothes. At
half-past six, the time for Roger to be taken to the depôt, I was at the
window of this house, which was on the road that led to the
cars--presently I heard several familiar voices.... I heard my name
distinctly pronounced.... "Mlle de Chateaudun." ... I concealed myself
behind the half-closed blinds, and attentively listened: "She is at
Rouen," said the Prince.

... "What a strange woman," said M. de Villiers: "Ah! this conduct is
easily explained," said Edgar, "she is angry with him." "Doubtless she
believes me culpable," replied the Prince, "and I wish at all costs to
see her and justify myself." In speaking thus, they all three passed
under the window where I was. I trembled--I dared not look at them....
When they had gone by, I peeped through the shutter and saw them all
standing still and admiring the beautiful bridge with its flower-covered
pillars, and the superb landscape spread before them. Seeing these three
handsome men standing there, all three so elegant, so distinguished! A
wicked sentiment of female vanity crossed my mind; and I said to myself
with miserable pride and triumph: "All three love me ... All three are
thinking of me!" ... Oh! I have been cruelly punished for this
contemptible vanity. Alas! one of the three did not love me--and he was
the one I loved--one of them did not think of me, and he was the one
that filled my every thought. Another sentiment more noble than the
first, saddened my heart. I said: "Here are three devoted friends ...
perhaps they will soon be bitter enemies ... and I the cause." O
Valentine! you cannot imagine how sad and despondent I am. Do not desert
me now that I most need your comforting sympathy! Burn my last letter, I
entreat you.

IRENE DE CHATEAUDUN.




XXIV.


EDGAR DE MEILHAN _to_ MADAME GUERIN,
Pont de l'Arche (Eure).

RICHEPORT, July 10th 18--.

Three times have I been to the post-office since you left the château in
such an abrupt and inexplicable manner. I am lost in conjecture about
your sudden departure, which was both unnecessary and unprepared. It is
doubtless because you do not wish to tell me the reason that you refuse
to see me. I know that you are still at Pont de l'Arche, and that you
have never left Madame Taverneau's house. So that when she tells me in a
measured and mysterious tone that you have been absent for some time;
looking at the closed door of your room, behind which I divine your
presence, I am seized with an insane desire to kick down the narrow
plank which separates me from you. Fits of gloomy passion possess me
which illogical obstacles and unjust resistance always excite.

What have I done? What can you have against me? Let me at least know the
crime for which I am punished. On the scaffold they always read the
victim his sentence, equitable or otherwise. Will you be more cruel than
a hangman? Read me my sentence. Nothing is more frightful than to be
executed in a dungeon without knowing for what offence.

For three days--three eternities--I have taxed my memory to an alarming
extent. I have recalled everything that I have said for the last two
weeks, word by word, syllable for syllable, endeavoring to give to each
expression its intonation, its inflection, its sharps and flats. Every
different signification that the music of the voice could give to a
thought, I have analyzed, debated, commented upon twenty times a day.
Not a word, accent nor gesture has enlightened me. I defy the most
embittered and envious spirit to find anything that could offend the
most susceptible pride, the haughtiest majesty. Nothing has occurred in
my familiar intercourse with you that would alarm a sensitive plant or
a mimosa. Therefore, such cannot be the motive for your panic-stricken
flight. I am young, ardent, impetuous; I attach no importance to certain
social conventionalities, but I feel confident that I have never failed
in a religious respect for the holiness of love and modesty. I love
you--I could never, wilfully, have offended you. How could my eyes and
lips have expressed what was neither in my head nor in my heart? If
there is no fire without smoke, as a natural consequence there can be no
smoke without fire!

It is not that--Is it caprice or coquetry? Your mind is too serious and
your soul too honest for such an act; and besides, what would be your
object? Such feline cruelties may suit blasé women of the world who are
roused by the sight of moral torture; who give, in the invisible sphere
of the passions, feasts of the Roman empresses, where beating hearts are
torn by the claws of the wild beasts of the soul, unbridled desires,
insatiate hate and maddened jealousy, all the hideous pack of bad
passions. Louise, you have not wished to play such a game with me. It
would be unavailing and dangerous.

Although I have been brought up in what is called the world, I am still
a savage at heart. I can talk as others do of politics, railroads,
social economy, literature. I can imitate civilized gesture tolerably
well; but under this white-glove polish I have preserved the vehemence
and simplicity of barbarism. Unless you have some serious, paramount
reason, not one of those trivial excuses with which ordinary women
revenge themselves upon the lukewarmness of their lovers--do not prolong
my punishment a day, an hour, a minute--speak not to me of reputation,
virtue or duty. You have given me the right to love you--by the light of
the stars, under the sweet-scented acacias, in the sunlight at the
window of Richard's donjon which opens over an abyss. You have conferred
upon me that august priesthood. Your hand has trembled in mine. A
celestial light, kindled by my glance, has shone in your eyes. If only
for a moment, your soul was mine--the electric spark united us.

It may be that this signifies nothing to you. I refuse to acknowledge
any such subtle distinctions--that moment united us for ever. For one
instant you wished to love me; I cannot divide my mind, soul and body
into three distinct parts; all my being worships you and longs to obtain
you. I cannot graduate my love according to its object. I do not know
who you are. You might be a queen of earth or the queen of heaven; I
could not love you otherwise.

Receive me. You need explain nothing if you do not wish; but receive me;
I cannot live without you. What difference does it make to you if I see
you?

Ah! how I suffered, even when you were at the château! What evil
influence stood between us? I had a vague feeling that something
important and fatal had happened. It was a sort of presentiment of the
fulfilment of a destiny. Was your fate or mine decided in that hour, or
both? What decisive sentence had the recording angel written upon the
ineffaceable register of the future? Who was condemned and who absolved
in that solemn hour?

And yet no appreciable event happened, nothing appeared changed in our
life. Why this fearful uneasiness, this deep dejection, this
presentiment of a great but unknown danger? I have had that same
instinctive perception of evil, that magnetic terror which slumbering
misers experience when a thief prowls around their hidden treasure; it
seemed as if some one wished to rob me of my happiness.

We were embarrassed in each other's presence; some one acted as a
restraint upon us. Who was it? No one was there but Raymond, one of my
best friends, who had arrived the evening before and was soon to depart
in order to marry his cousin, young, pretty and rich! It is singular
that he, so gentle, so confiding, so unreserved, so chivalrous, should
have appeared to me sharp, taciturn, rough, almost dull,--and my
feelings towards him were full of bitterness and spite. Can friendship
be but lukewarm hate? I fear so, for I often felt a savage desire to
quarrel with Raymond and seize him by the throat. He talked of a blade
of grass, a fly, of the most indifferent object, and I felt wounded as
if by a personality. Everything he did offended me; if he stood up I was
indignant, if he sat down I became furious; every movement of his seemed
a provocation; why did I not perceive this sooner? How does it happen
that the man for whom I entertain such a strong natural aversion should
have been my friend for ten years? How strange that I should not have
been aware of this antipathy sooner!

And you, ordinarily so natural, so easy in your manners, became
constrained; you scarcely answered me when he was present. The simplest
expression agitated you; it seemed as if you had to give an account to
some one of every word, and that you were afraid of a scolding, like a
young girl who is brought by her mother into the drawing-room for the
first time.

One evening, I was sitting by you on the sofa, reading to you that
sublime elegy of the great poet, La Tristesse d'Olympio; Raymond
entered. You rose abruptly, like a guilty child, assumed an humble and
repentant attitude, asking forgiveness with your eyes. In what secret
compact, what hidden covenant, had you failed?

The look with which Raymond answered yours doubtless contained your
pardon, for you resumed your seat, but moved away from me so as not to
abuse the accorded grace; I continued to read, but you no longer
listened--you were absorbed in a delicious revery through which floated
vaguely the lines of the poet. I was at your feet, and never have I felt
so far away from you. The space between us, too narrow for another to
occupy, was an abyss.

What invisible hand dashed me down from my heaven? Who drove me, in my
unconsciousness, as far from you as the equator from the pole? Yesterday
your eyes, bathed in light and life, turned softly towards me; your hand
rested willingly in mine. You accepted my love, unavowed but understood;
for I hate those declarations which remind one of a challenge. If one
has need to say that he loves, he is not worth loving; speech is
intended for indifferent beings; talking is a means of keeping silent;
you must have seen, in my glance, by the trembling of my voice, in my
sudden changes of color, by the impalpable caress of my manner, that I
love you madly.

It was when Raymond looked at you that I began to appreciate the depth
of my passion. I felt as if some one had thrust a red-hot iron into my
heart. Ah! what a wretched country France is! If I were in Turkey, I
would bear you off on my Arab steed, shut you up in a harem, with walls
bristling with cimetars, surrounded by a deep moat; black eunuchs should
sleep before the threshold of your chamber, and at night, instead of
dogs, lions should guard the precincts!

Do not laugh at my violence, it is sincere; no one will ever love you
like me. Raymond cannot--a sentimental Don Quixote, in search of
adventures and chivalrous deeds. In order to love a woman, he must have
fished her out of the spray of Niagara; or dislocated his shoulder in
stopping her carriage on the brink of a precipice; or snatched her out
of the hands of picturesque bandits, costumed like Fra Diavolo; he is
only fit for the hero of a ten-volume English novel, with a long-tailed
coat, tight gray pantaloons and top-boots. You are too sensible to
admire the philanthropic freaks of this modern paladin, who would be
ridiculous were he not brave, rich and handsome; this moral Don Juan,
who seduces by his virtue, cannot suit you.

When shall I see you? Our moments of happiness in this life are so
short; I have lost three days of Paradise by your persistence in
concealing yourself. What god can ever restore them to me?

Louise, I have only loved, till now, marble shadows, phantoms of beauty;
but what is this love of sculpture and painting compared with the
passion that consumes me? Ah! how bittersweet it is to be deprived at
once of will, strength and reason, and trembling, kneeling, vanquished,
to surrender the key of one's heart into the hands of the beautiful
victor! Do not, like Elfrida, throw it into the torrent!

EDGAR DE MEILHAN.




XXV.


RAYMOND DE VILLIERS _to_ MME. LA VICOMTESSE BE BRAIMES,
Hotel of the Prefecture, Grenoble (Isère).

ROUEN, July 12th 18--

MADAME:--If you should find in these hastily written lines expressions
of severity that might wound you in one of your tenderest affections, I
beg you to ascribe them to the serious interest with which you have
inspired me for a person whom I do do not know. Madame, the case is
serious, and the comedy, performed for the gratification of childish
vanity, might, if prolonged, end in a tragedy. Let Mademoiselle de
Chateaudun know immediately that her peace of mind, her whole future is
at stake. You have not a day, not an hour, not an instant to lose in
exerting your influence. I answer for nothing; haste, O haste! Your
position, your high intelligence, your good sense give you, necessarily,
the authority of an elder sister or a mother over Mademoiselle de
Chateaudun; exercise it if you would save that reckless girl. If she
acts from caprice, nothing can justify it; if she is playing a game it
is a cruel one, with ruin in the end; if she is subjecting M. de Monbert
to a trial, it has lasted long enough.

I accompanied M. de Monbert to Rouen; I lived in daily, hourly
intercourse with him, and had ample opportunities for studying his
character; he is a wounded lion. Never having had the honor of meeting
Mademoiselle de Chateaudun, I cannot tell whether the Prince is the man
to suit her; Mademoiselle de Chateaudun alone can decide so delicate a
question. But I do assert that M. de Monbert is not the man to be
trifled with, and whatever decision Mademoiselle de Chateaudun may come
to, it is her duty and due to her dignity to put an end to his suspense.

If she must strike, let her strike quickly, and not show herself more
pitiless than the executioner, who, at least, puts a speedy end to his
victim's misery. M. de Monbert, a gentleman in the highest acceptation
of the word, would not be what he now is, if he had been treated with
the consideration that his sincere distress so worthy of pity, his true
love so worthy of respect, commanded. Let her not deceive herself; she
has awakened, not one of those idle loves born in a Parisian atmosphere,
which die as they have lived, without a struggle or a heart-break, but a
strong and deep passion that if trifled with may destroy her. I
acknowledge that there is something absurd in a prince on the eve of
marrying a young and beautiful heiress finding himself deserted by his
fiancée with her millions; but when one has seen the comic hero of this
little play, the scene changes. The smile fades from the lips; the jest
is silent; terror follows in the footsteps of gayety, and the foolish
freak of the lovely fugitive assumes the formidable proportions of a
frightful drama. M. de Monbert is not what he is generally supposed to
be, what I supposed him before seeing him after ten years' separation.
His blood has been inflamed by torrid suns; he has preserved, in a
measure, the manners and fierce passions of the distant peoples that he
has visited; he hides it all under the polish of grace and elegance;
affable and ready for anything, one would never suspect, to see him, the
fierce and turbulent passions warring in his breast; he is like those
wells in India, which he told me of this morning; they are surrounded by
flowers and luxuriant foliage; go down into one of them and you will
quickly return pale and horror-stricken. Madame, I assure you that this
man suffers everything that it is possible to suffer here below. I watch
his despair; it terrifies me. Wounded love and pride do not alone prey
upon him; he is aware that Mademoiselle de Chateaudun may believe him
guilty of serious errors; he demands to be allowed to justify himself in
her eyes; he is exasperated by the consciousness of his unrecognised
innocence. Condemn him, if you will, but at least let him be heard in
his own defence. I have seen him writhe in agony and give way to groans
of rage and despair. When calm, he is more terrible to contemplate; his
silence is the pause before a tempest. Yesterday, on returning,
discouraged, after a whole day spent in fruitless search, he took my
hand and raised it abruptly to his eyes. "Raymond," said he, "I have
never wept," and my hand was wet. If you love Mademoiselle de
Chateaudun, if her future happiness is dear to you, if her heart can
only be touched through you, warn her, madame, warn her immediately;
tell her plainly what she has to expect; time presses.

It is a question of nothing less than anticipating an irreparable
misfortune. There is but one step from love to hate; hate which takes
revenge is still love. Tell this child that she is playing with thunder;
tell her the thunder mutters, and will soon burst over her head. If
Mademoiselle de Chateaudun should have a new love for her excuse, if she
has broken her faith to give it to another, unhappy, thrice unhappy she!
M. de Monbert has a quick eye and a practised hand; mourning would
follow swiftly in the wake of her rejoicing, and Mademoiselle de
Chateaudun might order her widow's weeds and her bridal robes at the
same time.

This, madame, is all that I have to say. The foolish rapture with which
my last letter teemed is not worth speaking of. A broken hope, crushed,
extinguished; a happiness vanished ere fully seen! During the four days
that I was at Richeport, I began to remark the existence between M. de
Meilhan and myself of a sullen, secret, unavowed but real irritation,
when a letter from M. de Monbert solved the enigma by convincing me that
I was in the way under that roof. Fool, why did I not see it myself and
sooner? Blind that I was, not to perceive from the first that this young
man loved that woman! Why did I not instantly divine that this young
poet could not live unscathed near so much beauty, grace and sweetness?
Did I think, unhappy man that I am, that she was only fair to me; that I
alone had eyes to admire her, a heart to worship and understand her?
Yes, I did think it; I believed blindly that she bloomed for me alone;
that she had not existed before our meeting; that no look, save mine,
had ever rested upon her; that she was, in fact, my creation; that I
had formed her of my thoughts, and vivified her with the fire of my
dreams. Even now, when we are parted for ever, I believe, that if God
ever created two beings for each other, we are those two beings, and if
every soul has a sister spirit, her soul is the sister spirit of mine.
M. de Meilhan loves her; who would not love her? But what he loves in
her is visible beauty: the slope of her shoulders, the perfection of her
contours. His love could not withstand a pencil-stroke which might
destroy the harmony of the whole. Beautiful as she is, he would desert
her for the first canvas or the first statue he might encounter. Her
rivals already people the galleries of the Louvre; the museums of the
world are filled with them. Edgar feels but one deep and true love; the
love of Art, so deep that it excludes or absorbs all others in his
heart. A fine prospect alone charms him, if it recalls a landscape of
Ruysdael or of Paul Huet, and he prefers to the loveliest model, her
portrait, provided it bears the signature of Ingres or Scheffer. He
loves this woman as an artist; he has made her the delight of his eyes;
she would have been the joy of my whole life. Besides, Edgar does not
possess any of the social virtues. He is whimsical by nature, hostile to
the proprieties, an enemy to every well-beaten track. His mind is always
at war with his heart; his sincerest inspirations have the scoffing
accompaniment of Don Juan's romance. No, he cannot make the happiness of
this Louise so long sought for, so long hoped for, found, alas! to be
irremediably lost. Louise deceives herself if she thinks otherwise. But
she does not think so. What is so agonizing in the necessity that
separates us, is the conviction that such a separation blasts two
destinies, silently united. I do not repine at the loss of my own
happiness alone, but above all, over that of this noble creature. I am
convinced that when we met, we recognised each other; she mentally
exclaimed, "It is he!" when I told myself, "It is she!" When I went to
bid her farewell, a long, eternal farewell, I found her pale, sad; the
tears rolled, unchecked, down her cheeks. She loves me, I know it; I
feel it; and still I must depart! she wept and I was forced to be
silent! One single word would have opened Paradise to us, and that word
I could not utter! Farewell, sweet dream, vanished for ever! And thou,
stern and stupid honor, I curse thee while I serve thee, and execrate
while I sacrifice all to thee. Ah! do not think that I am resigned; do
not believe that pride can ever fill up the abyss into which I have
voluntarily cast myself; do not hope that some day I shall find
self-satisfaction as a recompense for my abnegation. There are moments
when I hate myself and rebel against my own imbecility. Why depart? What
is Edgar to me? still less, what interest have I in his love episodes? I
love; I feel myself loved in return; what have I to do with anything
else?

Contempt for my cowardly virtue is the only price that I have received
for my sacrifice, and I twit myself with this thought of Pascal: "Man is
neither an angel nor a brute, and the misfortune is that when he wishes
to make himself an angel, he becomes a brute!" Be silent, my heart! At
least it shall never be said that the descendant of a race of cavaliers
entered his friend's house to rob him of his happiness.

I am sad, madame. The bright ray seen for a moment, has but made the
darkness into which I have fallen, more black and sombre; I am
unutterably sad! What is to become of me? Where shall I drag out my
weary days? I do not know. Everything wearies and bores me, or rather
all things are indifferent to me. I think I will travel. Wherever I go,
your image will accompany me, consoling me, if I can be consoled. At
first I thought that I would carry you my heart to comfort; but my
unhappiness is dear to me, and I do not wish to be cured of it.

I press M. de Braimes's hand, and clasp your charming children warmly to
my heart.

RAYMOND DE VILLIERS.




XXVI.


EDGAR DE MEILHAN _to the_ PRINCE DE MONBERT,
Poste Restante (Rouen).

Richeport, July 23d 18--.

I am mad with rage, wild with grief! That Louise! I do not know what
keeps me from setting fire to the house that conceals her! I must go
away; I shall commit some insane act, some crime, if I remain! I have
written her letter after letter; I have tried in every way to see her;
all my efforts unavailing! It is like beating your head against a wall!
Coquette and prude!--appalling combination, too common a monstrosity,
alas!

She will not see me! all is over! nothing can overcome her stupid,
obstinacy which she takes for virtue. If I could only have spoken to her
once, I should have said--I don't know what, but I should have found
words to make her return to me. But she entrenches herself behind her
obstinacy; she knows that I would vanquish her; she has no good
arguments with which to answer me; for I love her madly, desperately,
frantically! Passion is eloquent. She flies from me! O perfidy and
cowardice! she dare not face the misery she has caused, and veils her
eyes when she strikes!

I am going to America. I will dull my mental grief by physical
exhaustion; I will subdue the soul through the body; I will ascend the
giant rivers whose bosoms bloom with thousands of islands; penetrate
into the virgin forests where no trapper has yet set his foot; I will
hunt the buffalo with the savage, and swim upon that ocean of shaggy
heads and sharp horns; I will gallop at full speed over the prairie,
pursued by the smoke of the burning grass. If the memory of Louise
refuses to leave me, I will stop my horse and await the flames! I will
carry my love so far away that it must perforce leave me.

I feel it, my life is wrecked for ever!--I cannot live in a world where
Louise is not mine! Perhaps the young universe may contain a panacea
for my anguish! Solitude shall pour its balm in my wound; once away from
this civilization which stifles me, nature will cradle me in her
motherly arms; the elements will resume their empire over me; ocean,
sky, flowers, foliage will draw off the feverish electricity that
excites my nerves; I will become absorbed in the grand whole, I will no
longer live; I will vegetate and succeed in attaining the content of the
plant that opens its leaves to the sun. I feel that I must stop my
brain, suspend the beating of my heart, or I shall go raving mad.

I shall sail from Havre. A year from now write to me at the English fort
in the Rocky Mountains, and I will join you in whatever corner of the
globe you have gone to bury your despair over the loss of Irene de
Chateaudun!

EDGAR DE MEILHAN




XXVII.


EDGAR DE MEILHAN _to_ MADAME GUERIN,
Pont-de-l'Arche (Eure).

RICHEPORT, July 23d 18--.

Louise, I write to you, although the resolution that I have taken
should, no doubt, he silently carried out; but the swimmer struggling
with the waves in mid-ocean cannot help, although he knows it is
useless, uttering a last wild cry ere he sinks forever beneath the
flood. Perhaps a sail may appear on the desert horizon and his last
despairing shout be heard! It is so hard to believe ourselves finally
condemned and to renounce all hope of pardon! My letter will be of no
avail, and yet I cannot help sending it.

I am going to leave France, change worlds and skies. My passage is taken
for America. The murmur of ocean and forest must soothe my despair. A
great sorrow requires immensity. I would suffocate here. I should
expect, at every turn, to see your white dress gleaming among the trees.
Richeport is too much associated with you for me to dwell here longer;
your memory has exiled me from it for ever. I must put a huge
impossibility between myself and you; six thousand miles hardly suffice
to separate us.

If I remained, I should resort to all manner of mad schemes to recover
my happiness; no one gives up his cherished dream with more reluctance
than I, especially when a word could make it a reality.

Louise, Louise, why do you avoid me and close your heart against me! You
have not understood, perhaps, how much I love you? Has not my devotion
shone in my eyes? I have not been able, perhaps, to convey to you what I
felt? You have no more comprehended my adoration than the insensate idol
the prayers of the faithful prostrated before it.

Nevertheless, I was convinced that I could make you happy; I thought
that I appreciated the longings of your soul, and would be able to
satisfy them all.

What crime have I committed against heaven to be punished with this
biting despair? Perhaps I have failed to appreciate some sincere
affection, repulsed unwittingly some simple, tender heart that your
coldness now avenges; perhaps you are, unconsciously, the Nemesis of
some forgotten fault.

How fearful it is to suffer from rejected love! To say to oneself: "The
loved one exists, far from me, without me; she is young, smiling,
lovely--to others; my despair is only an annoyance to her, I am
necessary to her in nothing; my absence leaves no void in her life; my
death would only provoke from her an expression of careless pity; my
good and noble qualities have made no impression upon her; my verses,
the delight of other young hearts, she has never read; my talents are as
destructive to me as if they were crimes; why seek a hell in another
world; is it not here?"

And besides, what infinite tenderness, what perpetual care, what timid
and loving persistence, what obedience to every unexpressed wish, what
prompt realization of even the slightest fancy! for what! for a careless
glance, a smile that the thought of another brings to her lips! How can
it be helped! he who is not beloved is always in the wrong.

I go away, carrying the iron in my wound; I will not drag it out, I
prefer to die with it. May you live happy, may the fearful suffering
that you have caused me never be expiated. I would have it so; society
punishes murder of the body, heaven punishes murders of the soul. May
your hidden assassination escape Divine vengeance as long as possible.

Farewell, Louise, farewell.

EDGAR DE MEILHAN.




XXVIII.


IRENE DE CHATEAUDUN _to_ MME. LA VICOMTESSE DE BRAIMES,
Hotel de la Prefecture, Grenoble (Isère).

PARIS, July 27th 18--.

Valentine, I am very uneasy. Why have I not heard from you for a month?
Are you in any trouble? Is one of your dear children ill? Are you no
longer at Grenoble? Have you taken your trip without me? The last would
be the most acceptable reason for your silence. You have not received my
letters, and ignorance of my sorrows accounts for your not writing to
console me. Yet never have I been in greater need of the offices of
friendship. The resolution I have just taken fills me with alarm. I
acted against my judgment, but I could not do otherwise. I was
influenced by an agonized mother, whose hallowed grief persuaded me
against my will to espouse her interests. Why have I not a friend here
to interpose in my behalf and save me from myself? But, after all, does
it make any difference what becomes of me? Hope is dead within me. I no
longer dream of happiness. At last the sad mystery is explained.... M.
de Villiers is not free; he is engaged to his cousin.... Oh, he does not
love her, I am sure, but he is a slave to his plighted troth, and of
course she loves him and will not release him ... Can he, for a
stranger, sacrifice family ties and a love dating from his childhood?
Ah! if he really loved me, he would have had the courage to make this
sacrifice; but he only felt a tender sympathy for me, lively enough to
fill him with everlasting regret, not strong enough to inspire him with
a painful resolution. Thus two beings created for each other meet for a
moment, recognise one another, and then, unwillingly, separate, carrying
in their different paths of life a burden of eternal regrets! And they
languish apart in their separate spheres, unhappy and attached to
nothing but the memory of the past--made wretched for life by the
accidents of a day!

They are as the passengers of different ships, meeting for an hour in
the same port, who hastily exchange a few words of sympathy, then pass
away to other latitudes, under other skies--some to the North, others to
the South, to the land of ice--to the cradle of the sun--far, far away
from each other, to die. Is it then true that I shall never see him
again? Oh, my God! how I loved him! I can never forgive him for not
accepting this love that I was ready to lavish upon him.

I will now tell you what I have resolved to do. If I waver a moment I
shall not have the courage to keep my promise. Madame de Meilhan is
coming after me; I could not, after causing her such sorrow, resist the
tears of this unhappy mother. She was in despair; her son had suddenly
left her, and in spite of the secrecy of his movements, she discovered
that he was at Havre and had taken passage there for America, on the
steamer Ontario. She hoped to reach Havre in time to see her son, and
she relied upon me to bring him home. I am distressed at causing her so
much uneasiness, but what can I say to console her? I will at best be
generous; Edgar's sorrow is like my own; as he suffers for me, I suffer
for another; I cannot see his anguish, so like my own, without profound
pity; this pity will doubtless inspire me with eloquence enough to
persuade him to remain in France and not break his mother's heart by
desertion. Besides, I have promised, and Madame de Meilhan relies upon
me. How beautiful is maternal love! It crushes the loftiest pride, it
overthrows with one cry the most ambitious plans; this haughty woman is
subjugated by grief; she calls me her daughter; she gladly consents to
this marriage which, a short time ago, she said would ruin her son's
prospects, and which she looked upon with horror; she weeps, she
supplicates. This morning she embraced me with every expression of
devotion and cried out: "Give me back my son! Oh, restore to me my
son!... You love him, ... he loves you, ... he is handsome, charming,
talented.... I shall never see him again if you let him go away; tell
him you love him; have you the cruelty to deprive me of my only son?"
What could I say? how could I make an idolizing mother understand that I
did not love her son?... If I had dared to say, "It is not he that I
love, it is another," ... she would have said: "It is false; there is
not a man on earth preferable to my son." She wept over the letter that
Edgar wrote me before leaving. Valentine, this letter was noble and
touching. I could not restrain my own tears when I read it. Finally, I
was forced to yield. I am to accompany Madame de Meilhan to Havre; I
hope we will reach there before the steamer leaves!... Edgar will not go
to America, ... and I!... Oh, why is he the one to love me thus?... She
has come for me! Adieu; write to me, my dear Valentine, ... I am so
miserable. If you were only here! What will become of me? Adieu!

IRENE DE CHATEAUDUN.




XXIX.