r
marriage if she knew to what extent I am taken for our odious
rival! But this is prostitution! I am not myself; I am ashamed of
it all. A frantic desire seizes me sometimes to fly from Guerande
and those sands of Croisic.

August 25th.

I am determined to go and live in the ruins of the old chateau.
Calyste, worried by my restlessness, agrees to take me. Either he
knows life so little that he guesses nothing, or he _does_ know
the cause of my flight, in which case he cannot love me. I tremble
so with fear lest I find the awful certainty I seek that, like a
child, I put my hands before my eyes not to hear the explosion--

Oh, mother! I am not loved with the love that I feel in my heart.
Calyste is charming to me, that's true! but what man, unless he
were a monster, would not be, as Calyste is, amiable and gracious
when receiving all the flowers of the soul of a young girl of
twenty, brought up by you, pure, loving, and beautiful, as many
women have said to you that I am.

Guenic, September 18.

Has he forgotten her? That's the solitary thought which echoes
through my soul like a remorse. Ah! dear mamma, have all women to
struggle against memories as I do? None but innocent young men
should be married to pure young girls. But that's a deceptive
Utopia; better have one's rival in the past than in the future.

Ah! mother, pity me, though at this moment I am happy as a woman
who fears to lose her happiness and so clings fast to it,--one way
of killing it, says that profoundly wise Clotilde.

I notice that for the last five months I think only of myself,
that is, of Calyste. Tell sister Clotilde that her melancholy bits
of wisdom often recur to me. She is happy in being faithful to the
dead; she fears no rival. A kiss to my dear Athenais, about whom I
see Juste is beside himself. From what you told me in your last
letter it is evident he fears you will not give her to him.
Cultivate that fear as a precious product. Athenais will be
sovereign lady; but I who fear lest I can never win Calyste back
from himself shall always be a servant.

A thousand tendernesses, dear mamma. Ah! if my terrors are not
delusions, Camille Maupin has sold me her fortune dearly. My
affectionate respects to papa.

These letters give a perfect explanation of the secret relation between
husband and wife. Sabine thought of a love marriage where Calyste
saw only a marri