Gerolstein, 12th January, 1842.
Your assurance that your father is better induces me to hope you will be enabled to return here with him shortly. I dreaded that at Rosenfeld, situated in the midst of the woods, he would be exposed to the piercing cold of our rigorous winters, but, unfortunately, his fondness for hunting rendered all our advice useless.
I entreat you, Clémence, as soon as your father can bear the motion of the carriage, quit that country and this habitation, only fit for those Germans of an iron frame whose race has now disappeared.
The ceremony of our poor child's taking the vows is fixed for to-morrow, the thirteenth of January, the fatal day on which I drew my sword on my father! Alas! I thought too soon I was forgiven! The hope of passing my life with you and my child made me forget that it was she who had been punished up to the present time, and that my punishment was to come. And it is come, when, six months ago, she disclosed the double torture she suffered,—her incurable shame for the past, and her hopeless passion for Henry.
These two sentiments became, by a fatal logic, the cause of her fixed resolve to take the veil. You know that we could not conceal from her that, had we been in her place, we should have pursued the same noble and courageous course she has adopted. How could we answer those humble words, "I love Prince Henry too much to give him a hand that has been touched by the bandits of the Cité!"
I have seen her this morning, and though she seemed less pale than usual, though she said she did not suffer, yet her health gives me the most mortal alarm.
Alas! This morning, when I saw beneath the veil those noble features, I could not refrain from thinking how beautiful she looked the day of our marriage; it seemed that our happiness was reflected on her face.
As I told you, I saw her this morning. She does not know that to-morrow the Princess Juliana resigns her abbatical dignity, and that she has been unanimously chosen to succeed her.
Since the beginning of her novitiate there has been but one opinion of her piety, her charity, and the exactitude with which she fulfils all the rules of the order; she even exaggerates their austerity. She exercises in the convent that authority she exercised everywhere, but of which she herself is ignorant. She confessed to me this morning that she is not so absorbed by her religious duties as to forget the past.
"I accuse myself, dear father," said she, "because I cannot help reflecting that, had Heaven pleased to spare me the degradation that has stained my life, I might have lived happily with you and my husband. Spite of myself, I reflect on this, and on what passed in the Cité. In vain I beseech Heaven to deliver me from these temptations,—to fill my heart with himself; but he does not hear my prayers, doubtless because my life has rendered me unworthy of communion with him."