Letters of Two Brides

LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO RENEE DE L'ESTORADE

June.

Dear wedded sweetheart,--Your letter has arrived at the very moment to

hearten me for a bold step which I have been meditating night and day.

I feel within me a strange craving for the unknown, or, if you will,

the forbidden, which makes me uneasy and reveals a conflict in

progress in my soul between the laws of society and of nature. I

cannot tell whether nature in me is the stronger of the two, but I

surprise myself in the act of meditating between the hostile powers.

In plain words, what I wanted was to speak with Felipe, alone, at

night, under the lime-trees at the bottom of our garden. There is no

denying that this desire beseems the girl who has earned the epithet

of an "up-to-date young lady," bestowed on me by the Duchess in jest,

and which my father has approved.

Yet to me there seems a method in this madness. I should recompense

Felipe for the long nights he has passed under my window, at the same

time that I should test him, by seeing what he thinks of my escapade

and how he comports himself at a critical moment. Let him cast a halo

round my folly--behold in him my husband; let him show one iota less

of the tremulous respect with which he bows to me in the

Champs-Elysees--farewell, Don Felipe.

As for society, I run less risk in meeting my lover thus than when I

smile to him in the drawing-rooms of Mme. de Maufrigneuse and the old

Marquise de Beauseant, where spies now surround us on every side; and

Heaven only knows how people stare at the girl, suspected of a

weakness for a grotesque, like Macumer

. I cannot tell you to what a state of agitation I am reduced by

dreaming of this idea, and the time I have given to planning its

execution. I wanted you badly. What happy hours we should have

chattered away, lost in the mazes of uncertainty, enjoying in

anticipation all the delights and horrors of a first meeting in the

silence of night, under the noble lime-trees of the Chaulieu mansion,

with the moonlight dancing through the leaves! As I sat alone, every

nerve tingling, I cried, "Oh! Renee, where are you?" Then your letter

came, like a match to gunpowder, and my last scruples went by the

board.

Through the window I tossed to my bewildered adorer an exact tracing

of the key of the little gate at the end of the garden, together with

this note: "Your madness must really be put a stop to. If you broke your

neck, you would ruin the reputation of the woman you profess to

love. Are you worthy of a new proof of regard, and do you deserve

that I should talk with you under the limes at the foot of the

garden at the hour when the moon throws them into shadow?"