ight, reign in Paris,
where reigning is no easy matter even for kings. You have a considerable
fortune, which will be doubled if Macumer carries out his projects for
developing his great estates in Sardinia, the resources of which are
matter of common talk at Marseilles. Deny, if you can, that if either
has the right to be jealous, it is not you. But, thank God, we have
both hearts generous enough to place our friendship beyond reach of such
vulgar pettiness.

I know you, dear; I know that, ere now, you are ashamed of having fled.
But don't suppose that your flight will save you from a single word of
discourse which I had prepared for your benefit to-day beneath the rock.
Read carefully then, I beg of you, what I say, for it concerns you even
more closely than Macumer, though he also enters largely into my sermon.

Firstly, my dear, you do not love him. Before two years are over, you
will be sick of adoration. You will never look on Felipe as a husband;
to you he will always be the lover whom you can play with, for that
is how all women treat their lovers. You do not look up to him, or
reverence, or worship him as a woman should the god of her idolatry. You
see, I have made a study of love, my sweet, and more than once have I
taken soundings in the depth of my own heart. Now, as the result of a
careful diagnosis of your case, I can say with confidence, this is not
love.

Yes, dear Queen of Paris, you cannot escape the destiny of all queens.
The day will come when you long to be treated as a light-o'-love, to
be mastered and swept off your feet by a strong man, one who will not
prostrate himself in adoration before you, but will seize your arm
roughly in a fit of jealousy. Macumer loves you too fondly ever to be
able either to resist you or find fault with you. A single glance from
you, a single coaxing word, would melt his sternest resolution. Sooner
or later, you will learn to scorn this excessive devotion. He spoils
you, alas! just as I used to spoil you at the convent, for you are a
most bewitching woman, and there is no escaping your siren-like charms.

Worse than all, you are candid, and it often happens that our happiness
depends on certain social hypocrisies to which you will never stoop. For
instance, society will not tolerate a frank display of the wife's power
over her husband. The convention is that a man must no more show himself
the lover of his wife, however passionately he adores her, than a
married w