ou only knew
the sublime tranquillity in which I live, now that I have risen in
thought above all petty earthly interests, and how precious is the
thought of DOING (as your noble motto days) our duty, you would
enter your beautiful new life with unfaltering step and never a
glance behind you or about you. Above all, my earnest prayer to
you is that you be faithful to yourself and to those belonging to
you. Dear, society, in which you are to live, cannot exist without
the religion of duty, and you will terribly mistake it, as I
mistook it, if you allow yourself to yield to passion and to
fancy, as I did. Woman is the equal of man only in making her life
a continual offering, as that of man is a perpetual action; my
life has been, on the contrary, one long egotism. If may be that
God placed you, toward evening, by the door of my house, as a
messenger from Himself, bearing my punishment and my pardon.

Heed this confession of a woman to whom fame has been like a
pharos, warning her of the only true path. Be wise, be noble;
sacrifice your fancy to your duties, as head of your race, as
husband, as father. Raise the fallen standard of the old du
Guenics; show to this century of irreligion and want of principle
what a gentleman is in all his grandeur and his honor. Dear child
of my soul, let me play the part of a mother to you; your own
mother will not be jealous of this voice from a tomb, these hands
uplifted to heaven, imploring blessings on you. To-day, more than
ever, does rank and nobility need fortune. Calyste, accept a part
of mine, and make a worthy use of it. It is not a gift; it is a
trust I place in your hands. I have thought more of your children
and of your old Breton house than of you in offering you the
profits which time has brought to my property in Paris.

"Let us now sign the contract," said the young baron, returning to the
assembled company.

The Abbe Grimont, to whom the honor of the conversion of this celebrated
woman was attributed, became, soon after, vicar-general of the diocese.

The following week, after the marriage ceremony, which, according to the
custom of many families of the faubourg Saint-Germain, was celebrated at
seven in the morning at the church of Saint Thomas d'Aquin, Calyste
and Sabine got into their pretty travelling-carriage, amid the tears,
embraces, and congratulations of a score of friends, collected under the
awning of