What enhances my embarrassment is the nearness of M. de Gercourt’s return; must this most advantageous marriage be broken off? How, then, are we to make our children’s happiness, if it is not sufficient to desire it and devote all our cares to it? You will greatly oblige me by telling me what you would do in my place; I cannot fix upon any course: I find nothing more terrible than to have to decide another’s lot, and I am equally afraid of bringing to this occasion the severity of a judge or the weakness of a mother.
I reproach myself unceasingly for augmenting your sorrows by speaking to you of my own; but I know your heart: the consolation which you could give to others would become to you the greatest you could yourself receive.
Adieu, my dear and revered friend; I await your two replies with much impatience.
Paris, 13th December, 17**.
LETTER THE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-FIRST
MADAME DE ROSEMONDE TO THE CHEVALIER DANCENY
After what you have brought to my knowledge, Monsieur, nothing is left for me but to be silent and to weep. One regrets that one still lives, after learning such horrors; one blushes to be a woman, when one finds one capable of such excesses.
I will willingly concur with you, Monsieur, so far as I am concerned, in leaving in silence and oblivion all that may have brought about these sad events. I even hope that they may never cause you any other grief than that inseparable from the unhappy advantage which you obtained over my nephew. In spite of his errors, I feel that I shall never console myself for his loss: but my eternal affliction will be the sole vengeance I shall permit myself to obtain from you; I leave it to your heart to appreciate its extent.
If you will permit to my age a reflexion which is rarely made at yours, it is that, were one enlightened as to one’s true happiness, one would never seek it outside the bounds prescribed by religion and the laws.
You may rest assured that I will keep faithfully and willingly the deposit you have confided to me, but I ask you to authorize me to give it up to no one, not even to you, Monsieur, unless it should become necessary for your justification. I venture to believe that you will not refuse me this request, and that you have already realized how often one laments for having indulged in even the most just revenge.
I do not pause here in my requests: convinced as I am of your generosity and delicacy, it would be very worthy of both of these if you were also to place in my hands the letters of Mademoiselle de Volanges, which, apparently, you have retained, and which, doubtless, are of no further interest to you. I know that that young person has wronged you greatly; but I do not think that you have thought of punishing her; and, were it only out of respect for yourself, you will not degrade the object you have so greatly loved. I have no need to add, then, that the consideration which the daughter does not deserve is due at any rate to the mother, to that meritorious woman, in regard to whom you are not without having much to repair: for, after all, whatever illusion one may seek to impose on one’s self by a pretended delicacy of sentiment, he who first attempts to seduce a heart still virtuous and simple makes himself, from that fact alone, the first abettor of its corruption, and must be, for ever, responsible for the excesses and errors which ensue.