selected, they crowned them with flowers; so do you to me;
you owe me the flowers of pity, the music of my sacrifice. Am I
not a proof of your grandeur? Will you not rise to the level of my
disdained love,--disdained in spite of its sincerity, in spite of
its immortal passion?

Ask Camille how I behaved to her after the day she told me, on her
return to Les Touches, that she loved Claude Vignon. I was mute; I
suffered in silence. Well, for you I will show even greater
strength,--I will bury my feelings in my heart, if you will not
drive me to despair, if you will only understand my heroism. A
single word of praise from you is enough to make me bear the pains
of martyrdom.

But if you persist in this cold silence, this deadly disdain, you
will make me think you fear me. Ah, Beatrix, be with me what you
are,--charming, witty, gay, and tender. Talk to me of Conti, as
Camille has talked to me of Claude. I have no other spirit in my
soul, no other genius but that of love; nothing is there that can
make you fear me; I will be in your presence as if I loved you
not.

Can you reject so humble a prayer?--the prayer of a child who only
asks that his Light shall lighten him, that his Sun may warm him.

He whom you love can be with you at all times, but I, poor
Calyste! have so few days in which to see you; you will soon be
freed from me. Therefore I may return to Les Touches to-morrow,
may I not? You will not refuse my arm for that excursion? We shall
go together to Croisic and to Batz? If you do not go I shall take
it for an answer,--Calyste will understand it!

There were four more pages of the same sort in close, fine writing,
wherein Calyste explained the sort of threat conveyed in the last
words, and related his youth and life; but the tale was chiefly told
in exclamatory phrases, with many of those points and dashes of which
modern literature is so prodigal when it comes to crucial passages,--as
though they were planks offered to the reader's imagination, to help him
across crevasses. The rest of this artless letter was merely repetition.
But if it was not likely to touch Madame de Rochefide, and would very
slightly interest the admirers of strong emotions, it made the mother
weep, as she said to her son, in her tender voice,--

"My child, you are not happy."

This tumultuous poem of sentiments which had arisen like a storm in
Calyste's heart, terrified the barones