MME. LA VICOMTESSE BE BRAIMES,
Hotel of the Prefecture, Grenoble (Isère).
ROUEN, July 12th 18—
MADAME:—If you should find in these hastily written lines expressions of severity that might wound you in one of your tenderest affections, I beg you to ascribe them to the serious interest with which you have inspired me for a person whom I do do not know. Madame, the case is serious, and the comedy, performed for the gratification of childish vanity, might, if prolonged, end in a tragedy. Let Mademoiselle de Chateaudun know immediately that her peace of mind, her whole future is at stake. You have not a day, not an hour, not an instant to lose in exerting your influence. I answer for nothing; haste, O haste! Your position, your high intelligence, your good sense give you, necessarily, the authority of an elder sister or a mother over Mademoiselle de Chateaudun; exercise it if you would save that reckless girl. If she acts from caprice, nothing can justify it; if she is playing a game it is a cruel one, with ruin in the end; if she is subjecting M. de Monbert to a trial, it has lasted long enough.
I accompanied M. de Monbert to Rouen; I lived in daily, hourly intercourse with him, and had ample opportunities for studying his character; he is a wounded lion. Never having had the honor of meeting Mademoiselle de Chateaudun, I cannot tell whether the Prince is the man to suit her; Mademoiselle de Chateaudun alone can decide so delicate a question. But I do assert that M. de Monbert is not the man to be trifled with, and whatever decision Mademoiselle de Chateaudun may come to, it is her duty and due to her dignity to put an end to his suspense.
If she must strike, let her strike quickly, and not show herself more pitiless than the executioner, who, at least, puts a speedy end to his victim's misery. M. de Monbert, a gentleman in the highest acceptation of the word, would not be what he now is, if he had been treated with the consideration that his sincere distress so worthy of pity, his true love so worthy of respect, commanded. Let her not deceive herself; she has awakened, not one of those idle loves born in a Parisian atmosphere, which die as they have lived, without a struggle or a heart-break, but a strong and deep passion that if trifled with may destroy her. I acknowledge that there is something absurd in a prince on the eve of marrying a young and beautiful heiress finding himself deserted by his fiancée with her millions; but when one has seen the comic hero of this little play, the scene changes. The smile fades from the lips; the jest is silent; terror follows in the footsteps of gayety, and the foolish freak of the lovely fugitive assumes the formidable proportions of a frightful drama. M. de Monbert is not what he is generally supposed to be, what I supposed him before seeing him after ten years' separation. His blood has been inflamed by torrid suns; he has preserved, in a measure, the manners and fierce passions of the distant peoples that he has visited; he hides it all under the polish of grace and elegance; affable and ready for anything, one would never suspect, to see him, the fierce and turbulent passions warring in his breast; he is like those wells in India, which he told me of this morning; they are surrounded by flowers and luxuriant foliage; go down into one of them and you will quickly return pale and horror-stricken. Madame, I assure you that this man suffers everything that it is possible to suffer here below. I watch his despair; it terrifies me. Wounded love and pride do not alone prey upon him; he is aware that Mademoiselle de Chateaudun may believe him guilty of serious errors; he demands to be allowed to justify himself in her eyes; he is exasperated by the consciousness of his unrecognised innocence. Condemn him, if you will, but at least let him be heard in his own defence. I have seen him writhe in agony and give way to groans of rage and despair. When calm, he is more terrible to contemplate; his silence is the pause before a tempest. Yesterday, on returning, discouraged, after a whole day spent in fruitless search, he took my hand and raised it abruptly to his eyes. "Raymond," said he, "I have never wept," and my hand was wet. If you love Mademoiselle de Chateaudun, if her future happiness is dear to you, if her heart can only be touched through you, warn her, madame, warn her immediately; tell her plainly what she has to expect; time presses.
It is a question of nothing less than anticipating an irreparable misfortune. There is but one step from love to hate; hate which takes revenge is still love. Tell this child that she is playing with thunder; tell her the thunder mutters, and will soon burst over her head. If Mademoiselle de Chateaudun should have a new love for her excuse, if she has broken her faith to give it to another, unhappy, thrice unhappy she! M. de Monbert has a quick eye and a practised hand; mourning would follow swiftly in the wake of her rejoicing, and Mademoiselle de Chateaudun might order her widow's weeds and her bridal robes at the same time.
This, madame, is all that I have to say. The foolish rapture with which my last letter teemed is not worth speaking of. A broken hope, crushed, extinguished; a happiness vanished ere fully seen! During the four days that I was at Richeport, I began to remark the existence between M. de Meilhan and myself of a sullen, secret, unavowed but real irritation, when a letter from M. de Monbert solved the enigma by convincing me that I was in the way under that roof. Fool, why did I not see it myself and sooner? Blind that I was, not to perceive from the first that this young man loved that woman! Why did I not instantly divine that this young poet could not live unscathed near so much beauty, grace and sweetness? Did I think, unhappy man that I am, that she was only fair to me; that I alone had eyes to admire her, a heart to worship and understand her? Yes, I did think it; I believed blindly that she bloomed for me alone; that she had not existed before our meeting; that no look, save mine, had ever rested upon her; that she was, in fact, my creation; that I had formed her of my thoughts, and vivified her with the fire of my dreams. Even now, when we are parted for ever, I believe, that if God ever created two beings for each other, we are those two beings, and if every soul has a sister spirit, her soul is the sister spirit of mine. M. de Meilhan loves her; who would not love her? But what he loves in her is visible beauty: the slope of her shoulders, the perfection of her contours. His love could not withstand a pencil-stroke which might destroy the harmony of the whole. Beautiful as she is, he would desert her for the first canvas or the first statue he might encounter. Her rivals already people the galleries of the Louvre; the museums of the world are filled with them. Edgar feels but one deep and true love; the love of Art, so deep that it excludes or absorbs all others in his heart. A fine prospect alone charms him, if it recalls a landscape of Ruysdael or of Paul Huet, and he prefers to the loveliest model, her portrait, provided it bears the signature of Ingres or Scheffer. He loves this woman as an artist; he has made her the delight of his eyes; she would have been the joy of my whole life. Besides, Edgar does not possess any of the social virtues. He is whimsical by nature, hostile to the proprieties, an enemy to every well-beaten track. His mind is always at war with his heart; his sincerest inspirations have the scoffing accompaniment of Don Juan's romance. No, he cannot make the happiness of this Louise so long sought for, so long hoped for, found, alas! to be irremediably lost. Louise deceives herself if she thinks otherwise. But she does not think so. What is so agonizing in the necessity that separates us, is the conviction that such a separation blasts two destinies, silently united. I do not repine at the loss of my own happiness alone, but above all, over that of this noble creature. I am convinced that when we met, we recognised each other; she mentally exclaimed, "It is he!" when I told myself, "It is she!" When I went to bid her farewell, a long, eternal farewell, I found her pale, sad; the tears rolled, unchecked, down her cheeks. She loves me, I know it; I feel it; and still I must depart! she wept and I was forced to be silent! One single word would have opened Paradise to us, and that word I could not utter! Farewell, sweet dream, vanished for ever! And thou, stern and stupid honor, I curse thee while I serve thee, and execrate while I sacrifice all to thee. Ah! do not think that I am resigned; do not believe that pride can ever fill up the abyss into which I have voluntarily cast myself; do not hope that some day I shall find self-satisfaction as a recompense for my abnegation. There are moments when I hate myself and rebel against my own imbecility. Why depart? What is Edgar to me? still less, what interest have I in his love episodes? I love; I feel myself loved in return; what have I to do with anything else?
Contempt for my cowardly virtue is the only price that I have received for my sacrifice, and I twit myself with this thought of Pascal: "Man is neither an angel nor a brute, and the misfortune is that when he wishes to make himself an angel, he becomes a brute!" Be silent, my heart! At least it shall never be said that the descendant of a race of cavaliers entered his friend's house to rob him of his happiness.
I am sad, madame. The bright ray seen for a moment, has but made the darkness into which I have fallen, more black and sombre; I am unutterably sad! What is to become of me? Where shall I drag out my weary days? I do not know. Everything wearies and bores me, or rather all things are indifferent to me. I think I will travel. Wherever I go, your image will accompany me, consoling me, if I can be consoled. At first I thought that I would carry you my heart to comfort; but my unhappiness is dear to me, and I do not wish to be cured of it.