Letters of Two Brides

The secret of your isolation is no secret to me! If I

am bold, it is because I long that you should know how much is

yours. "Take all, Louise, and is so doing bestow on me the one life

possible for me in this world--the life of devotion. In placing

the yoke on my neck, you run no risk; I ask nothing but the joy of

knowing myself yours. Needless even to say you will never love me;

it cannot be otherwise. I must love you from afar, without hope,

without reward beyond my own love.

"In my anxiety to know whether you will accept me as your servant,

I have racked my brain to find some way in which you may

communicate with me without any danger of compromising yourself.

Injury to your self-respect there can be none in sanctioning a

devotion which has been yours for many days without your

knowledge. Let this, then, be the token. At the opera this

evening, if you carry in your hand a bouquet consisting of one red

and one white camellia--emblem of a man's blood at the service of

the purity he worships--that will be my answer. I ask no more;

thenceforth, at any moment, ten years hence or to-morrow, whatever

you demand shall be done, so far as it is possible for man to do

it, by your happy servant,

"FELIPE HENAREZ."

P. S.--You must admit, dear, that great lords know how to love! See

the spring of the African lion! What restrained fire! What loyalty!

What sincerity! How high a soul in low estate! I felt quite small and

dazed as I said to myself, "What shall I do?"

It is the mark of a great man that he puts to flight all ordinary

calculations. He is at once sublime and touching, childlike and of the

race of giants. In a single letter Henarez has outstripped volumes

from Lovelace or Saint-Preux. Here is true love, no beating about the

bush. Love may be or it may not, but where it is, it ought to reveal

itself in its immensity.

Here am I, shorn of all my little arts! To refuse or accept! That is

the alternative boldly presented me, without the ghost of an opening

for a middle course. No fencing allowed! This is no longer Paris; we

are in the heart of Spain or the far East. It is the voice of

Abencerrage, and it is the scimitar, the horse, and the head of

Abencerrage which he offers, prostrate before a Catholic Eve! Shall I

accept this last descendant of the Moors? Read again and again his

Hispano-Saracenic letter, Renee dear, and you will see how love makes

a clean sweep of all the Judaic bargains of your philosophy.