divine young girl who is worthy of your
love.

If I were yours, your life would be blighted. You would have given
me your whole existence, and I--you see, I am frank--I should have
taken it; I should have gone with you, Heaven knows where, far
from the world! But I should have made you most unhappy; for I am
jealous. I see lions lurking in the path, and monsters in drops of
water. I am made wretched by trifles that most women put up with;
inexorable thoughts--from my heart, not yours--would poison our
existence and destroy my life. If a man, after ten years'
happiness, were not as respectful and as delicate as he was to me
at first, I should resent the change; it would abase me in my own
eyes! Such a lover could not believe in the Amadis and the Cyrus
of my dreams. To-day true love is but a dream, not a reality. I
see in yours only the joy of a desire the end of which is, as yet,
unperceived by you.

For myself, I am not forty years old; I have not bent my pride
beneath the yoke of experience,--in short, I am a woman too young
to be anything but odious. I will not answer for my temper; my
grace and charm are all external. Perhaps I have not yet suffered
enough to have the indulgent manners and the absolute tenderness
which come to us from cruel disappointments. Happiness has its
insolence, and I, I fear, am insolent. Camille will be always your
devoted slave; I should be an unreasonable tyrant. Besides,
Camille was brought to you by your guardian angel, at the turning
point of your life, to show you the career you ought to follow,--a
career in which you cannot fail.

I know Felicite! her tenderness is inexhaustible; she may ignore
the graces of our sex, but she possesses that fruitful strength,
that genius for constancy, that noble intrepidity which makes us
willing to accept the rest. She will marry you to some young girl,
no matter what she suffers. She will find you a free Beatrix--if
it is a Beatrix indeed who answers to your desires in a wife, and
to your dreams; she will smooth all the difficulties in your way.
The sale of a single acre of her ground in Paris would free your
property in Brittany; she will make you her heir; are you not
already her son by adoption?

Alas! what could I do for your happiness? Nothing. Do not betray
that infinite love which contents itself with the duties of
motherhood. Ah! I think her very fortunate,