y from the company to the embrasure of a window and
read as follows:--

Camille Maupin to Calyste.

Calyste, before I enter my convent cell I am permitted to cast a
look upon the world I am now to leave for a life of prayer and
solitude. That look is to you, who have been the whole world to me
in these last months. My voice will reach you, if my calculations
do not miscarry, at the moment of a ceremony I am unable to take
part in.

On the day when you stand before the altar giving your hand and
name to a young and charming girl who can love you openly before
earth and heaven, I shall be before another altar in a convent at
Nantes betrothed forever to Him who will neither fail nor betray
me. But I do not write to sadden you,--only to entreat you not to
hinder by false delicacy the service I have wished to do you since
we first met. Do not contest my rights so dearly bought.

If love is suffering, ah! I have loved you indeed, my Calyste. But
feel no remorse; the only happiness I have known in life I owe to
you; the pangs were caused by my own self. Make me compensation,
then, for all those pangs, those sorrows, by causing me an
everlasting joy. Let the poor Camille, who _is_ no longer, still
be something in the material comfort you enjoy. Dear, let me be
like the fragrance of flowers in your life, mingling myself with
it unseen and not importunate.

To you, Calyste, I shall owe my eternal happiness; will you not
accept a few paltry and fleeting benefits from me? Surely you will
not be wanting in generosity? Do you not see in this the last
message of a renounced love? Calyste, the world without you had
nothing more for me; you made it the most awful of solitudes; and
you have thus brought Camille Maupin, the unbeliever, the writer
of books, which I am soon to repudiate solemnly--you have cast
her, daring and perverted, bound hand and foot, before God.

I am to-day what I might have been, what I was born to be,
--innocent, and a child. I have washed my robes in the tears of
repentance; I can come before the altar whither my guardian angel,
my beloved Calyste, has led me. With what tender comfort I give
you that name, which the step I now take sanctifies. I love you
without self-seeking, as a mother loves her son, as the Church
loves her children. I can pray for you and for yours without one
thought or wish except for your happiness. Ah! if y