Letters of Two Brides

The very Lives of the Saints helped us to understand what was so

carefully left unsaid! But the day when I was reft of your sweet

company, I became a true Carmelite, such as they appeared to us, a

modern Danaid, who, instead of trying to fill a bottomless barrel,

draws every day, from Heaven knows what deep, an empty pitcher,

thinking to find it full. My aunt knew nothing of this inner life.

How could she, who has made a

paradise for herself within the two acres of her convent, understand

my revolt against life? A religious life, if embraced by girls of our

age, demands either an extreme simplicity of soul, such as we,

sweetheart, do not possess, or else an ardor for self-sacrifice like

that which makes my aunt so noble a character. But she sacrificed

herself for a brother to whom she was devoted; to do the same for an

unknown person or an idea is surely more than can be asked of mortals.

For the last fortnight I have been gulping down so many reckless

words, burying so many reflections in my bosom, and accumulating such

a store of things to tell, fit for your ear alone, that I should

certainly have been suffocated but for the resource of letter-writing

as a sorry substitute for our beloved talks. How hungry one's heart

gets! I am beginning my journal this morning, and I picture to myself

that yours is already started, and that, in a few days, I shall be at

home in your beautiful Gemenos valley, which I know only through your

descriptions, just as you will live that Paris life, revealed to you

hitherto only in our dreams.

Well, then, sweet child, know that on a certain morning--a red-letter

day in my life--there arrived from Paris a lady companion and

Philippe, the last remaining of my grandmother's valets, charged to

carry me off. When my aunt summoned me to her room and told me the

news, I could not speak for joy, and only gazed at her stupidly.

"My child," she said, in her guttural voice, "I can see that you leave

me without regret, but this farewell is not the last; we shall meet

again. God has placed on your forehead the sign of the elect. You have

the pride which leads to heaven or to hell, but your nature is too

noble to choose the downward path. I know you better than you know

yourself; with you, passion, I can see, will be very different from

what it is with most women."

She drew me gently to her and kissed my forehead. The kiss made my

flesh creep, for it burned with that consuming fire which eats away

her life, which has turned to black the azure of her eyes, and

softened the lines about them, has furrowed the warm ivory of her

temples, and cast a sallow tinge over the beautiful face.