X.
EDGAR DE MEILHAN
to the
PRINCE DE MONBERT,
Saint Dominique Street, Paris.
RICHEPORT, June 3d, 18—
It seems, my dear Roger, that we are engaged in a game of interrupted addresses. For my Louise Guérin, like your Irene de Chateaudun, has gone I know not where, leaving me to struggle, in this land of apple trees, with an incipient passion which she has planted in my breast. Flight has this year become an epidemic among women.
The day after that famous soirée, I went to the post-office ostensibly to carry the letter containing those triumphant details, but in reality to see Louise, for any servant possessed sufficient intelligence to acquit himself of such a commission. Imagine my surprise and disappointment at finding instead of Madame Taverneau a strange face, who gruffly announced that the post-mistress had gone away for a few days with Madame Louise Guérin. The dove had flown, leaving to mark its passage a few white feathers in its mossy nest, a faint perfume of grace in this common-place mansion!
I could have questioned Madame Taverneau's fat substitute, but I am principled against asking questions; things are explained soon enough. Disenchantment is the key to all things. When I like a woman I carefully avoid all her acquaintance, any one who can tell me aught about her. The sound of her name pronounced by careless lips, puts me to flight; the letters that she receives might be given me open and I should throw them, unread, into the fire. If in speaking she makes any allusion to the past events of her life, I change the conversation; I tremble when she begins a recital, lest some disillusionizing incident should escape her which would destroy the impression I had formed of her. As studiously as others hunt after secrets I avoid them; if I have ever learned anything of a woman I loved, it has always been in spite of my earnest efforts, and what I have known I have carefully endeavored to forget.