u have
never disclaimed this relation; you have always pressed my hand when we
met. Your professed friendship justified my confidence, and it would
have been ungrateful in me to have esteemed you less than I did the
savage. You and Mad. de Braimes have cunningly organized against me a
plot of the basest nature. Doubtless you call it a happy combination of
forces--I call it a perfidious conspiracy. I imagine I hear you and Mad.
de Braimes at this very moment laughing at your victim as you
congratulate yourselves on the success of your machinations. It affords
me pleasure to think that one of these two friends is, perhaps, a man.
Were they both women I could not demand satisfaction. You deserve my
gratitude for your great kindness in assisting me when I most needed a
friend. When I sought Mlle, de Chateaudun with a foolish, blind anxiety,
you charitably aided me in my efforts to find her. You were my guide, my
compass, my staff; you led me over roads where Mlle, de Chateaudun never
thought of going; your guidance was so skilful that at the end of my
searches you alone found what we had both been vainly seeking. You must
have been delighted and entertained at the result, monsieur! Did Mad. de
Braimes laugh very much? Truly, monsieur, you are old beyond your years,
and your education was not confined to Greek and Latin; your talent for
acting has been cultivated by a profound study of human nature. You play
high comedy to perfection, and you should not let your extreme modesty
prevent your aspiring to a more brilliant theatre. It is a pity that
your fine acting should be wasted upon me alone. You deserve a larger
and more appreciative audience! You do not know yourself. I will hold a
mirror before your eyes; you can affect astonishment, disinterestedness,
magnanimity, and a constellation of other virtues, blooming like flowers
in the gardens of the golden age. You are a perfected comedian. If you
really possessed all the virtues you assume, you would, like Enoch,
excite the jealousy of Heaven, and be translated to your proper sphere.
A man of your transcendent virtue would be a moral scourge in our
corrupt society. He would, by contrast, humiliate his neighbors. In
these degenerate days such a combination of gifts is antagonistic to
nature.

Do relieve our anxiety by accepting the title of comedian. Acknowledge
yourself to be an actor, and our anxious fears are quieted.

I would have my mind set at rest upon one more point