All of your letters have reached me at once. I received two yesterday and one this morning, the latter being written first and dated at Berne. Ah! if it had reached me in due time, what distress I would have been spared! What! he wrote you, "I love her," and said nothing to me! When he left me you know how unhappy he was, and I, who was made so miserable by his departure, I thought he was indifferent!
When I told you that I was about to sacrifice myself to console Madame de Meilhan, you must have thought me insane; I can see by your letter from Geneva, which I received yesterday, that you were dreadfully alarmed about me. Cursed journey! Cursed mail! A letter lost might have destroyed my happiness for ever! This letter was delayed on the road several days, and, during these several days, I suffered more torture than I ever felt during the most painful moments of my life. These useless sorrows, that I might so easily have avoided, render me incredulous and trembling before this future of promised happiness. I have suffered so much that joy itself finds me fearful; and then this happiness is so great that it is natural to receive it with sadness and doubt.
He told you of his delirious joy, on recognising me at the window; but he did not tell you, he could not tell you, of my uneasiness, of my dreadful suspicions, my despair when I saw him in this garret.
Our situations were not the same; what astonished and delighted him, also astonished and delighted me, but at the same time filled me with alarm. He believed me to be poor, discovered me in an attic; it was nothing to be surprised at; the only wonderful thing about it was that my garret should be immediately opposite the house where he lived.... I knew he was wealthy; I knew he was the Count de Villiers; I knew he was of an old and noble family; I knew from his conversation that he had travelled over Italy in a manner suitable to his rank; I found him in Richeport, elegant and generous; he possesses great simplicity of manner, it is true, but it is the lordly simplicity of a great man.... In fact, everything I knew about him convinces me that his proper place was not a garret, and that if I saw him there, I did not see him in his own house.
Remember, Valentine, that for two months I have lived upon deceptions; I have been disillusioned; I have inspired the most varied and excessive griefs; I have studied the most picturesque consolations; I have seen myself lamented at the Odeon, by one lover in a box with painted women, ... and at Havre by another in a tavern with a slave.... I might now see myself lamented at Paris by a third in a garret with a grisette! Oh! torture! in this one instant of dread, all the arrows of jealousy rankled in my heart. Oh! I could not be indignant this time, I could not complain, I could only die.... And I think that if I had not seen the pure joy beaming in his eyes, lighting up his noble countenance; if I had not instantly divined, comprehended everything, I believe I would have dashed myself from the window to escape the strange agony that made my heart cold and my brain dizzy—agony that I could not and would not endure. But he looked too happy to be culpable; he made a sign, and I saw that he was coming over to see me. I waited for him—and in what a state! My hair was disarranged, and I called Blanchard to assist me in brushing it; my voice was so weak she came running to me frightened, thinking me ill ... a thousand confused thoughts rushed through my brain; one thing was clear: I had found him again, I was about to see him!
When I was dressed—oh! that morning little did I think I would need a becoming dress, ... I sat on the sofa in my poor little parlor, and there, pale with emotion, scarcely daring to breathe, I listened with burning impatience to the different noises about the house. In a few moments I heard a knock, the door open, a voice exclaim, "You, Monsieur le Comte!" He did not wait to be announced, but came in at once to the parlor where I was. He was so joyous at finding me, and I so delighted at seeing him, that for the first blissful moments of our meeting neither of us thought explanations necessary; his joy proved that he was free to love me, and my manner showed that I might be everything to him. When he found his voice, he said to me: "What! were you this cherished star that I have loved for two years?"
Then I remembered my momentary fears, and said: "What! were you the mysterious beacon? Why were you living there? Why did the Comte de Villiers dwell in a garret?"
Then, dear Valentine, he told me his noble history; he confessed, rather unwillingly, that he had been poor like myself; very poor, because he had given all his fortune to save the honor of a friend, M. Frederick de B—— Oh! how I wept, while listening to this touching story, so full of sublime simplicity, generous carelessness and self-sacrifice! This would have made me adore him if I had not already madly loved him. While he was telling me, I was thinking of the unfortunate Frederick's wife, of her anxiety, of the torture she suffered, as a wife and a mother, when she believed her husband lost and her children ruined; of her astonishment and wild joy when she saw them all saved; of her deep, eternal gratitude! and I had but one thought, I said to myself: "How I would like to talk with this woman of Raymond!"
I wished in turn to relate my own history; he refused to listen to me, and I did not insist. I wished to be generous, and let him for some time longer believe me to be poor and miserable. He was so happy at the idea of enriching and ennobling me, that I had not the courage to disenchant him.
However, yesterday, I was obliged to tell him everything; in his impatience to hasten our marriage he had devoted the morning to the drawing up of his papers, contracts and settlements; for two days he had been tormenting me for my family papers in order to arrange them, and to find the register of my birth, which was indispensable when he appeared before the mayor. I had always put off giving it to him, but yesterday he entreated me so earnestly, that I was compelled to assent. In order to prepare him for the shock, I told him my papers were in my secretary, and that if he would come into my room he could see them. At the sight of the grand family pictures covering the walls of my retreat, he stood aghast; then he examined them with uneasiness. Some of the portraits bore the names and titles of the illustrious persons they represented. Upon reading the name, Victor Louis de Chateaudun, Marechal de France, he stopped motionless and looked at me with a strange air; then he read, beneath the portrait of a beautiful woman, the following inscription: "Marie Felicité Diane de Chateaudun, Duchesse de Montignan," and turning quickly towards me, with a face deadly pale, he exclaimed: "Louise?" "No, not Louise, but Irene!" I replied; and my voice rang with ancestral pride when I thus appeared before him in my true character.