"I see you, my Rose, laying supper in the wretched kitchen, while the farm-hands gather round the hearth. I like to picture you going cautiously through the old woman's room at night, so as to write to me by the rays of the moon, without disturbing the household with an unwonted light. You come and sit on the ledge of the open window, to receive the full benefit of the moonbeams, and then you write on your knee those trembling lines which convey your emotion to me.
"I see you in the wonderful setting of the silver-flooded orchard. The golden silk of your long tresses embroiders your white night-dress. Your eyes are filled with peace; you are beautiful like that; and there is nothing so sweet as an orchard in the moonlight. The apple-trees seem to lay their even shadows softly upon the pallor of the grass; and their ordered quiet spreads a serene and simple joy over nature's sleep....
"Rose, at the moving period that brought us together, how I would that your sweet composure had been sometimes a little ruffled! It would have appeared to me of a finer quality had I found it more variable. A woman's reason should be less rigid; and I should loathe mine if it were not a leaven of indulgence and forgiveness in my life....
"Oh, Rose, Rose, tell me that the coldness of your soul springs from its wonderful purity! Tell me that your heart is so deep that the sound of the joys which fall into it cannot be heard outside! Tell me that it is the storm of your life that has crushed the flowers of your sensibility for the time....
"I well know that our interest cannot always be active, that it must be suppressed; I know that indifference is essential to the happy equilibrium of our faculties and that, beside the exaltation of our soul, it is the untroubled lake fertilising and refreshing the earth. And you will find, Rose, how necessary it is to be on our guard against it in our judgments and how it can take possession of some natures and slowly destroy them under a hateful appearance of wisdom! I would rather discover ugly and active defects in you than that beautiful impassiveness. Besides, as I have told you many a time, the excellence that seems to me ideal has its weaknesses. It is rather a way of perfection for our poor humanity, a way that is all the better because it is adapted for our feeble and wavering steps!...
"Once, at harvest-time, I met you in the little road near the church. It was the end of the day; and you were coming back from the fields. You were standing high on a swaying mountain of hay, you were driving a great farm-horse, which disappeared under its load. Your tall figure stood out against the sky ablaze with the last rays of the sun; and I still see your look of absolute unconcern. You wore a long blue apron that came all round you and a bodice of the same colour. In that blue faded by the sun, with your hair a pale cloud in the gold of the sunset, you looked like an archangel taken from some Italian fresco.
"As you passed me, you timidly returned my smile; and I followed you for a long time with my eyes. Do you still remember the trouble you had in passing under the dark vault of the old oaks? Every now and again, a branch, longer and lower than the others, threatened your face: you caught it with a quick movement and lifted it over your head. At one time, there were so many of those branches and they were so heavy that you were obliged to lie back on the hay, holding both arms over your face to save it from being struck. Then, when the lumbering wagon stopped in front of the farm, my archangel stepped down humbly into the mud, took the horse by the bridle and disappeared from sight....
"The reason why this memory now comes back to me is that I find in it some affinity with what I would ask of your reason: those simple movements by which you will be able to thrust aside the bad habits that disfigure you! May your reason be the beautiful archangel to guide and sway your humble life, but may it sometimes know how to descend and stoop in obedience to the necessities of chance. Even as, on the day when I saw you, you could not alter the road which you had to follow, so you cannot alter your real nature; but you must 'know the way,' you must guide and control."
4
"Paris,... 19—