Letters of Two Brides

The sandy waste which he tries to

place, and does place, between us is covered by his deeprooted pride;

he wraps himself in mystery. The hanging back is on his side, the

boldness on mine. This odd situation affords me the more amusement

because the whole thing is mere trifling. What is a man, a Spaniard,

and a teacher of languages to me? I make no account of any man

whatever, were he a king. We are worth far more, I am sure, than the

greatest of them. What a slave I would have made of Napoleon! If he

had loved me, shouldn't he have felt the whip!

Yesterday I aimed a shaft at M. Henarez which must have touched him to

the quick. He made no reply; the lesson was over, and he bowed with a

glance at me, in which I read that he would never return. This suits

me capitally; there would be something ominous in starting an

imitation Nouvelle Heloise. I have just been reading Rousseau's, and

it has left me with a strong distaste for love. Passion which can

argue and moralize seems to me detestable.

Clarissa also is much too pleased with herself and her long, little

letter; but Richardson's work is an admirable picture, my father tells

me, of English women. Rousseau's seems to me a sort of philosophical

sermon, cast in the form of letters.

Love, as I conceive it, is a purely subjective poem. In all that books

tell us about it, there is nothing which is not at once false and

true. And so, my pretty one, as you will henceforth be an authority

only on conjugal love, it seems to me my duty--in the interest, of

course, of our common life--to remain unmarried, and have a grand

passion, so that we may enlarge our experience.

Tell me every detail of what happens to you, especially in the first

few days, with that strange animal called a husband. I promise to do

the same for you if ever I am loved. Farewell, poor martyred darling.