Letters of Two Brides

For sole reply he honored me with a meaning look. For some days he has

amused himself with teasing me at lunch; he watches me, and I

dissemble. In this way I have played with him cruelly as father and

ambassador in petto. Hadn't he taken me for a fool? He asked me what

I thought of this and that young man, and of some girls whom I had met

in several houses. I replied with quite inane remarks on the color of

their hair, their faces, and the difference in their figures. My

father seemed disappointed at my crassness, and inwardly blamed

himself for having asked me.

"Still, father," I added, "don't suppose I am saying what I really

think: mother made me afraid the other day that I had spoken more

frankly than I ought of my impressions."

"With your family you can speak quite freely," my mother replied.

"Very well, then," I went on. "The young men I have met so far strike

me as too self-centered to excite interest in others; they are much

more taken up with themselves than with their company. They can't be

accused of lack of candor at any rate. They put on a certain

expression to talk to us, and drop it again in a moment, apparently

satisfied that we don't use our eyes. The man as he converses is the

lover; silent, he is the husband. The girls, again, are so artificial

that it is impossible to know what they really are, except from the

way they dance; their figures and movements alone are not a sham. But

what has alarmed me most in this fashionable society is its brutality.

The little incidents which take place when supper is announced give

one some idea--to compare small things with great--of what a popular

rising might be. Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general

selfishness. I imagined society very different. Women count for little

in it; that may perhaps be a survival of Bonapartist ideas."

"Armande is coming on extraordinarily," said my mother.

"Mother, did you think I should never get beyond asking to see Mme. de

Stael?" My father smiled, and rose from the table. Saturday.

My dear, I have left one thing out. Here is the tidbit I have reserved

for you. The love which we pictured must be extremely well hidden; I

have seen not a trace of it. True, I have caught in drawing-rooms now

and again a quick exchange of glances, but how colorless it all is!

Love, as we imagined it, a world of wonders, of glorious dreams, of

charming realities, of sorrows that waken sympathy, and smiles that

make sunshine, does not exist. The bewitching words, the constant

interchange of happiness, the misery of absence, the flood of joy at

the presence of the beloved one--where are they? What soil produces

these radiant flowers of the soul? Which is wrong? We or the world?