“Emilie, you know it, since the three years of our union, our love, never has a cloud troubled it. Each day has added a day to this life of delight.
“Yet, in spite of myself, doubtless, I have caused you, perhaps, not some pain, not some displeasure, but some little contrariety, and you always so sweet, so good, you have no doubt hidden it from me. Ah, well! in this solemn day I come to you on both knees, to ask your forgiveness as I would ask forgiveness of God for having offended him.
“You know, Emilie, that dear as you are to me, our ever reviving tenderness would change our solitude to paradise. Ah, well! this happiness of the past, which seemed then to go beyond all possible limits, is yet to be doubled.
“Do you not find, Emilie, that in the happiness of two there is a sort of egotism, a sort of isolation, which disappears when a cherished child comes to double our pleasures by adding to them the most tender, most touching, most adorable duties?
“Oh, these duties, how well you will understand them!
“Have you not been a model of daughters? What sublime devotion to your father! What abnegation! What care!
“Oh, yes! the best, the most adorable of daughters will be the best, the most adorable of mothers!
“My God! how we love each other, Emilie! And as we love each other, how we shall love it, this poor little being! My God! how we shall love it!
“My wife, my beloved angel, I weep again.
“My reason is lost. Oh, forgive me, but I have had no news from you in so long a time, and then the first letter that you write me, after so many months of absence, comes to inform me of this. My God! how can I resist weeping?