Letters of Two Brides

I can put up for a long time with a life like this, compounded of work

and meditation, of solitude and society. Be happy, therefore, Fernand;

my abdication has brought no afterthoughts; I have no regrets like

Charles V., no longing to try the game again like Napoleon. Five days

and nights have passed since I wrote my will; to my mind they might

have been five centuries. Honor, titles, wealth, are for me as though

they had never existed.

Now that the conventional barrier of respect which hedged me round has

fallen, I can open my heart to you, dear boy. Though cased in the

armor of gravity, this heart is full of tenderness and devotion, which

have found no object, and which no woman has divined, not even she

who, from her cradle, has been my destined bride. In this lies the

secret of my political enthusiasm. Spain has taken the place of a

mistress and received the homage of my heart. And now Spain, too, is

gone! Beggared of all, I can gaze upon the ruin of what once was me

and speculate over the mysteries of my being.

Why did life animate this carcass, and when will it depart? Why has

that race, pre-eminent in chivalry, breathed all its primitive virtues

--its tropical love, its fiery poetry--into this its last offshoot, if

the seed was never to burst its rugged shell, if no stem was to spring

forth, no radiant flower scatter aloft its Eastern perfumes? Of what

crime have I been guilty before my birth that I can inspire no love?

Did fate from my very infancy decree that I should be stranded, a

useless hulk, on some barren shore! I find in my soul the image of the

deserts where my fathers ranged, illumined by a scorching sun which

shrivels up all life. Proud remnant of a fallen race, vain force, love

run to waste, an old man in the prime of youth, here better than

elsewhere shall I await the last grace of death. Alas! under this

murky sky no spark will kindle these ashes again to flame. Thus my

last words may be those of Christ, My God, Thou hast forsaken me!

Cry of agony and terror, to the core of which no mortal has ventured

yet to penetrate!

You can realize now, Fernand, what a joy it is to me to live afresh in

you and Marie. I shall watch you henceforth with the pride of a

creator satisfied in his work. Love each other well and go on loving

if you would not give me pain; any discord between you would hurt me

more than it would yourselves.