ot bring yourself to love the poor Francis,
whom, nevertheless, my heart yearns after, and of whom I love to hear
even the meagre details you give to me, I rejoice, my friend, that you
have made a home for your sister's sweet little girls. You must have
something to love. Ah! to me my Arnauld and my Clemence brought
unspeakable comfort. I do not think of them as Philippe de Vericourt's
children; they are the children whom God have given to me. I do not
watch fearfully, lest his ungovernable temper and his selfish soul
should be reproduced in them. I trust that God will make them good and
happy, and aid me in my efforts towards that end. You cannot separate
the idea of Francis from that of the woman who cheated you, and did not
love you; who has blighted your hopes of domestic happiness; and who
still, even from a distance, has the power to threaten you with
exposing the disgrace that you are connected with her. I am sorry that
you cannot feel as I do; but if you can love these little girls, it may
make you softer towards him. When you wrote to me of your poor Mary's
sad death, and of the sadder life that had preceded it, I began to
wonder whether, after all, your system of free choice in marriage
produces greater happiness or greater misery than ours of a marriage
settled by our parents.

"I recollect how bitterly I felt that I had been made over, without my
wishes or tastes being consulted, to a man who cared so little for my
happiness; but at least I had no illusion to be dispelled; I did not
marry as your sister did, hoping to find Elysium, and landing in
hopeless misery; and yet my parents loved me after their fashion. I
have often thought that those whom we love, and who love us, have far
more power to injure us than those who hate us; but, alas! neither
friends nor enemies can injure us more than we do ourselves. Your
sister Mary had the disenchantment to go through; I had to chafe at the
coercion; while you, my friend, had to muse bitterly on the consequence
of one rash speech of your own, which chained you to an unworthy and
detested wife.

"I think we need a future state that we may do justice to ourselves in
it quite as much as to repair the wrongs we may have done to others.
Which of us has really made the best of himself or herself? I really
try now for the sake of my children to be cheerful; but sad and bitter
memories are too deeply interwoven with my being for me to succeed as I
should wish. If I live,