my Camille! She can
well afford to forgive your feeling for poor Beatrix; women of her
age are indulgent to such fancies. When they are sure of being
loved, they will pardon a passing infidelity; in fact, it is often
one of their keenest pleasures to triumph over a younger rival.
Camille is above such women, and that remark does not refer to
her; but I make it to ease your mind.

I have studied Camille closely; she is, to my eyes, one of the
greatest women of our age. She has mind and she has goodness,--two
qualities almost irreconcilable in woman; she is generous and
simple,--two other grandeurs seldom found together in our sex. I
have seen in the depths of her soul such treasures that the
beautiful line of Dante on eternal happiness, which I heard her
interpreting to you the other day, "Senza brama sicura ricchezza,"
seems as if made for her. She has talked to me of her career; she
has related her life, showing me how love, that object of our
prayers, our dreams, has ever eluded her. I replied that she
seemed to me an instance of the difficulty, if not the
impossibility, of uniting in one person two great glories.

You, Calyste, are one of the angelic souls whose mate it seems
impossible to find; but Camille will obtain for you, even if she
dies in doing so, the hand of some young girl with whom you can
make a happy home.

For myself, I hold out to you a friendly hand, and I count, not on
your heart, but on your mind, to make you in future a brother to
me, as I shall be a sister to you; and I desire that this letter
may terminate a correspondence which, between Les Touches and
Guerande, is rather absurd.

Beatrix de Casteran.

The baroness, stirred to the depths of her soul by the strange
exhibitions and the rapid changes of her boy's emotions, could no longer
sit quietly at her work in the ancient hall. After looking at Calyste
from time to time, she finally rose and came to him in a manner that was
humble, and yet bold; she wanted him to grant a favor which she felt she
had a right to demand.

"Well," she said, trembling, and looking at the letter, but not directly
asking for it.

Calyste read it aloud to her. And these two noble souls, so simple,
so guileless, saw nothing in that wily and treacherous epistle of the
malice or the snares which the marquise had written into it.

"She is a noble woman, a grand woman!" said the baroness, with moistened