harder for you than it is for most,
because you began at such tremendous altitudes. You had your Ruy Blas
and Petrarca and the mandoline and the moonlight and the love-philtres
all mixed up in an intoxicating draught. You have naturally a great deal
more disillusion to go through than if you had married a country squire
or a Scotch laird, who would never have suggested any romantic delights.
One cannot go near heaven without coming down with a crash, like the
poor men in the balloons. You have been up in your balloon, and you are
now coming down. Ah, my dear, everything depends on _how_ you come down!
You will think me a monster for saying so, but it will rest so much in
your own hands. You won't believe it, but it will. If you come down with
tact and good humor, it will all be right afterwards; but if you show
temper, as men say of their horses, why, then the balloon will lie
prone, a torn, empty, useless bag, that will never again get off the
ground. To speak plainly, dear, if you will receive with resignation and
sweetness the unpleasant discovery that San Zenone is mortal, you won't
be unhappy, and you will soon get used to it; but if you perpetually
fret about it you won't alter him, and you will both be miserable; or,
if not miserable, you will do something worse; you will each find your
amusement in somebody else. I know you so well, my poor, pretty Gladys;
you want such an immense quantity of sympathy and affection; but you
won't get it, my dear child. I quite understand that the prince looks
like a picture, and he has made life an erotic poem for you for a month,
and the inevitable reaction which follows seems dull as ditch-water, you
would even say as cruel as the grave. But it is _nothing new_. Do try
and get that well in your mind. Try, too, and be as light-hearted as you
can. Men hate an unamusable woman. Make believe to laugh at the _petits
theatres_ if you can't really do it: if you don't, dear, he will go to
somebody else who will. Why do those _demi-monde_ women get such
preference over us? Only because they don't bore their men. A man would
sooner we flung a champagne-glass at his head than cried for five
minutes. We can't fling champagne-glasses: the prejudices of our
education are against it. It is an immense loss to us; we must make up
for it as much as we can by being as agreeable as we know how to be. We
shall always be a dozen lengths behind those others. By the way, you
said in one of your earlies