of the happy
event of the birth of a son to the Count and Countess. I held that
letter in my hand for two hours, sitting on this terrace--on this bench.
Two months after, urged by Octave, by M. de Grandville, and Monsieur de
Serizy, my kind friends, and broken by the death of my uncle, I agreed
to take a wife.

"Six months after the revolution of July I received this letter, which
concludes the story of this couple:--

"'MONSIEUR MAURICE,--I am dying though I am a mother--perhaps because
I am a mother. I have played my part as a wife well; I have deceived my
husband. I have had happiness not less genuine than the tears shed by
actresses on the stage. I am dying for society, for the family, for
marriage, as the early Christians died for God! I know not of what I am
dying, and I am honestly trying to find out, for I am not perverse; but
I am bent on explaining my malady to you--you who brought that heavenly
physician your uncle, at whose word I surrendered. He was my director;
I nursed him in his last illness, and he showed me the way to heaven,
bidding me persevere in my duty.

"'And I have done my duty.

"'I do not blame those who forget. I admire them as strong and necessary
natures; but I have the malady of memory! I have not been able twice to
feel that love of the heart which identifies a woman with the man she
loves. To the last moment, as you know, I cried to your heart, in the
confessional, and to my husband, "Have mercy!" But there was no mercy.
Well, and I am dying, dying with stupendous courage. No courtesan was
ever more gay than I. My poor Octave is happy; I let his love feed on
the illusions of my heart. I throw all my powers into this terrible
masquerade; the actress is applauded, feasted, smothered in flowers; but
the invisible rival comes every day to seek its prey--a fragment of
my life. I am rent and I smile. I smile on two children, but it is the
elder, the dead one, that will triumph! I told you so before. The dead
child calls me, and I am going to him.

"'The intimacy of marriage without love is a position in which my soul
feels degraded every hour. I can never weep or give myself up to dreams
but when I am alone. The exigencies of society, the care of my child,
and that of Octave's happiness never leave me a moment to refresh
myself, to renew my strength, as I could in my solitude. The incessant
need for watchfulness startles my heart with constant alarms. I have not
succeeded in implanting