errible trial? I will be calm. My personal feelings must
not darken the second sight, so clear for those I love. Oh!
painful--painful task! for the fear of yielding involuntarily to evil
sentiments must not render me too indulgent toward this girl. I might
compromise Agricola's happiness, since my decision is to guide his
choice. Poor creature that I am. How I deceive myself! Agricola asks my
advice, because he thinks that I shall have not the melancholy courage to
oppose his passion; or else he would say to me: 'No matter--I love; and I
brave the future!'

"But then, if my advice, if the instincts of my heart, are not to guide
him--if his resolution is taken beforehand--of what use will be to
morrow's painful mission? Of what use? To obey him. Did he not
say--'Come!' In thinking of my devotion for him, how many times, in the
secret depths of my heart, I have asked myself if the thought had ever
occurred to him to love me otherwise than as a sister; if it had ever
struck him, what a devoted wife he would have in me! And why should it
have occurred to him? As long as he wished, as long as he may still wish,
I have been, and I shall be, as devoted to him, as if I were his wife,
sister, or mother. Why should he desire what he already possesses?

"Married to him--oh, God!--the dream is mad as ineffable. Are not such
thoughts of celestial sweetness--which include all sentiments from
sisterly to maternal love--forbidden to me, on pain of ridicule as
distressing as if I wore dresses and ornaments, that my ugliness and
deformity would render absurd? I wonder, if I were now plunged into the
most cruel distress, whether I should suffer as much as I do, on hearing
of Agricola's intended marriage? Would hunger, cold, or misery diminish
this dreadful dolor?--or is it the dread pain that would make me forget
hunger, cold, and misery?

"No, no; this irony is bitter. It is not well in me to speak thus. Why
such deep grief? In what way have the affection, the esteem, the respect
of Agricola, changed towards me? I complain--but how would it be, kind
heaven! if, as, alas! too often happens, I were beautiful, loving,
devoted, and he had chosen another, less beautiful, less loving, less
devoted?--Should I not be a thousand times more unhappy? for then I
might, I would have to blame him--whilst now I can find no fault with
him, for never having thought of a union which was impossible, because
ridiculous. And had he wished it, could I ever