"Is this true, my friend? those attacks of melancholy which we have observed—"
"Have no other cause than wicked remembrances; but, fortunately, we now know our enemy, and we will triumph over it."
"But from whom, then, is this letter, my friend?" asked Clémence.
"From Rigolette, the wife of Germain."
"Rigolette!" exclaimed Fleur-de-Marie; "what happiness to hear from her!"
"My friend," said Clémence, aside to Rudolph, at the same time glancing at Fleur-de-Marie, "do you not fear that this letter may recall to her painful recollections?"
"These are those very remembrances I wish to put an end to, my dear
Clémence: we must approach them boldly, and I am sure that I shall find in
Rigolette's letter excellent arms against them, for this excellent little
creature adored our child, and appreciated her as she should be."
And Rudolph read aloud the following letter:—
"Bouqueval Farm, August 15th, 1841.
"YOUR HIGHNESS, I take the liberty of writing to you again, to make you a sharer of a great happiness which has befallen us, and to ask a new favor of you, to whom we already owe so many, or, rather, to whom we owe the perfect paradise in which we live, I, my Germain, and his good mother.