my desires. Initiated now
into the gloomy secrets of a family, sharing the anguish of a Christian
Niobe, sad with her sadness, my soul darkened, I saw the valley in the
tone of my own thoughts. The fields were bare, the leaves of the poplars
falling, the few that remained were rusty, the vine-stalks were burned,
the tops of the trees were tan-colored, like the robes in which royalty
once clothed itself as if to hide the purple of its power beneath the
brown of grief. Still in harmony with my thoughts, the valley, where the
yellow rays of the setting sun were coldly dying, seemed to me a living
image of my heart.

To leave a beloved woman is terrible or natural, according as the mind
takes it. For my part, I found myself suddenly in a strange land of
which I knew not the language. I was unable to lay hold of things to
which my soul no longer felt attachment. Then it was that the height
and the breadth of my love came before me; my Henriette rose in all her
majesty in this desert where I existed only through thoughts of her.
That form so worshipped made me vow to keep myself spotless before my
soul's divinity, to wear ideally the white robe of the Levite, like
Petrarch, who never entered Laura's presence unless clothed in white.
With what impatience I awaited the first night of my return to my
father's roof, when I could read the letter which I felt of during the
journey as a miser fingers the bank-bills he carries about him. During
the night I kissed the paper on which my Henriette had manifested her
will; I sought to gather the mysterious emanations of her hand, to
recover the intonations of her voice in the hush of my being. Since then
I have never read her letters except as I read that first letter; in
bed, amid total silence. I cannot understand how the letters of our
beloved can be read in any other way; yet there are men, unworthy to
be loved, who read such letters in the turmoil of the day, laying them
aside and taking them up again with odious composure.

Here, Natalie, is the voice which echoed through the silence of that
night. Behold the noble figure which stood before me and pointed to the
right path among the cross-ways at which I stood.

To Monsieur le Vicomte Felix de Vandenesse:

What happiness for me, dear friend, to gather the scattered
elements of my experience that I may arm you against the dangers
of the world, through which I pray that you pass scatheless. I
have felt the highest plea