Letters of Two Brides

LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO MME. DE L'ESTORADE

Well, my Renee, you are a love of a woman, and I quite agree now that

we can only be virtuous by cheating. Will that satisfy you? Moreover,

the man who loves us is our property; we can make a fool or a genius

of him as we please; only, between ourselves, the former happens more

commonly. You will make yours a genius, and you won't tell the secret

--there are two heroic actions, if you will!

Ah! if there were no future life, how nicely you would be sold, for

this is martyrdom into which you are plunging of your own accord. You

want to make him ambitious and to keep him in love! Child that you

are, surely the last alone is sufficient.

Tell me, to what point is calculation a virtue, or virtue calculation?

You won't say? Well, we won't quarrel over that, since we have Bonald

to refer to. We are, and intend to remain, virtuous; nevertheless at

this moment I believe that you, with all your pretty little knavery,

are a better woman than I am.

Yes, I am shockingly deceitful. I love Felipe, and I conceal it from

him with an odious hypocrisy. I long to see him leap from his tree to

the top of the wall, and from the wall to my balcony--and if he did,

how I should wither him with my scorn! You see, I am frank enough with

you. What restrains me? Where is the mysterious power which prevents me

from telling Felipe, dear fellow, how supremely happy he has made me

by the outpouring of his love--so pure, so absolute, so boundless, so

unobtrusive, and so overflowing?

Mme. de Mirbel is painting my portrait, and I intend to give it to

him, my dear. What surprises me more and more every day is the

animation which love puts into life. How full of interest is every

hour, every action, every trifle! and what amazing confusion between

the past, the future, and the present! One lives in three tenses at

once. Is it still so after the heights of happiness are reached? Oh!

tell me, I implore you, what is happiness? Does it soothe, or does it

excite? I am horribly restless; I seem to have lost all my bearings; a

force in my heart drags me to him, spite of reason and spite of

propriety. There is this gain, that I am better able to enter into

your feelings.

Felipe's happiness consists in feeling himself mine; the aloofness of

his love, his strict obedience, irritate me, just as his attitude of

profound respect provoked me when he was only my Spanish master. I am

tempted to cry out to him as he passes, "Fool, if you love me so much

as a picture, what will it be when you know the real me?"