Letters of Two Brides

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In a single glance I confided my heart to you, and you read the
meaning. The purest feelings that ever took root in a young girl's
breast are yours. The thought and meditation of which I have told you
served only to enrich the mind; but if ever the wounded heart turns to
the brain for counsel, be sure the young girl would show some kinship
with the demon of knowledge and of daring.

I swear to you, Felipe, if you love me, as I believe you do and if I
have reason to suspect the least falling off in the fear, obedience,
and respect which you have hitherto professed, if the pure flame of
passion which first kindled the fire of my heart should seem to me any
day to burn less vividly, you need fear no reproaches. I would not
weary you with letters bearing any trace of weakness, pride, or anger,
nor even with one of warning like this. But if I spoke no words,
Felipe, my face would tell you that death was near. And yet I should
not die till I had branded you with infamy, and sown eternal sorrow in
your heart; you would see the girl you loved dishonored and lost in
this world, and know her doomed to everlasting suffering in the next.

Do not therefore, I implore you, give me cause to envy the old, happy
Louise, the object of your pure worship, whose heart expanded in the
sunshine of happiness, since, in the words of Dante, she possessed,

Senza brama, sicura ricchezza!

I have searched the _Inferno_ through to find the most terrible
punishment, some torture of the mind to which I might link the
vengeance of God.

Yesterday, as I watched you, doubt went through me like a sharp, cold
dagger's point. Do you know what that means? I mistrusted you, and the
pang was so terrible, I could not endure it longer. If my service be
too hard, leave it, I would not keep you. Do I need any proof of your
cleverness? Keep for me the flowers of your wit. Show to others no
fine surface to call forth flattery, compliments, or praise. Come to
me, laden with hatred or scorn, the butt of calumny, come to me with
the news that women flout you and ignore you, and not one loves you;
then, ah! then you will know the treasures of Louise's heart and love.

We are only rich when our wealth is buried so deep that all the world
might trample it under foot, unknowing. If you were handsome, I don't
suppose I should have looked at you twice, or discovered one of the
thousand reasons out of which my love sprang. True, we know no more of
these reasons than we know why it is the sun makes the flowers to
bloom, and ripens the fruit. Yet I could tell you of one reason very
dear to me.

The character, expression, and individuality that ennoble your face
are a sealed book to all but me. Mine is the power which transforms
you into the most lovable of men, and that is why I would keep your
mental gifts also for myself. To others they should be as meaningless
as your eyes, the charm of your mouth and features. Let it be mine
alone to kindle the beacon of your intelligence, as I bring the
lovelight into your eyes. I would have you the Spanish grandee of old
days, cold, ungracious, haughty, a monument to be gazed at from afar,
like the ruins of some barbaric power, which no one ventures to
explore. Now, you have nothing better to do than to open up pleasant
promenades for the public, and show yourself of a Parisian affability!

Is my ideal portrait, then, forgotten? Your excessive cheerfulness was
redolent of your love. Had it not been for a restraining glance from
me, you would have proclaimed to the most sharp-sighted, keen-witted,
and unsparing of Paris salons, that your inspiration was drawn from
Armande-Louise-Marie de Chaulieu.

I believe in your greatness too much to think for a moment that your
love is ruled by policy; but if you did not show a childlike
simplicity when with me, I could only pity you. Spite of this first
fault, you are still deeply admired by
LOUISE DE CHAULIEU.



XXIII

FELIPE TO LOUISE

When God beholds our faults, He sees also our repentance. Yes, my
beloved mistress, you are right. I felt that I had displeased you, but
knew not how. Now that you have explained the cause of your trouble, I
find in it fresh motive to adore you. Like the God of Israel, you are
a jealous deity, and I rejoice to see it. For what is holier and more
precious than jealousy? My fair guardian angel, jealousy is an
ever-wakeful sentinel; it is to love what pain is to the body, the
faithful herald of evil. Be jealous of your servant, Louise, I beg of
you; the harder you strike, the more contrite will he be and kiss the
rod, in all submission, which proves that he is not indifferent to you.

But, alas! dear, if the pains it cost me to vanquish my timidity and
master feelings you thought so feeble were invisible to you, will
Heaven, think you, reward them? I assure you, it needed no slight
effort to show myself to you as I was in the days before I loved. At
Madrid I was considered a good talker, and I wanted you to see for
yourself the few gifts I may possess. If this were vanity, it has been
well punished.

Your last glance utterly unnerved me. Never had I so quailed, even
when the army of France was at the gates of Cadiz and I read peril for
my life in the dissembling words of my royal master. Vainly I tried to
discover the cause of your displeasure, and the lack of sympathy
between us which this fact disclosed was terrible to me. For in truth
I have no wish but to act by your will, think your thoughts, see with
your eyes, respond to your joy and suffering, as my body responds to
heat and cold. The crime and the anguish lay for me in the breach of
unison in that common life of feeling which you have made so fair.

"I have vexed her!" I exclaimed over and over again, like one
distraught. My noble, my beautiful Louise, if anything could increase
the fervor of my devotion or confirm my belief in your delicate moral
intuitions, it would be the new light which your words have thrown
upon my own feelings. Much in them, of which my mind was formerly but
dimly conscious, you have now made clear. If this be designed as
chastisement, what can be the sweetness of your rewards?

Louise, for me it was happiness enough to be accepted as your servant.
You have given me the life of which I despaired. No longer do I draw a
useless breath, I have something to spend myself for; my force has an
outlet, if only in suffering for you. Once more I say, as I have said
before, that you will never find me other than I was when first I
offered myself as your lowly bondman. Yes, were you dishonored and
lost, to use your own words, my heart would only cling the more
closely to you for your self-sought misery. It would be my care to
staunch your wounds, and my prayers should importune God with the
story of your innocence and your wrongs.

Did I not tell you that the feelings of my heart for you are not a
lover's only, that I will be to you father, mother, sister, brother
--ay, a whole family--anything or nothing, as you may decree? And is it
not your own wish which has confined within the compass of a lover's
feeling so many varying forms of devotion? Pardon me, then, if at
times the father and brother disappear behind the lover, since you
know they are none the less there, though screened from view. Would
that you could read the feelings of my heart when you appear before
me, radiant in your beauty, the centre of admiring eyes, reclining
calmly in your carriage in the Champs-Elysees, or seated in your box
at the Opera! Then would you know how absolutely free from selfish
taint is the pride with which I hear the praises of your loveliness
and grace, praises which warm my heart even to the strangers who utter
them! When by chance you have raised me to elysium by a friendly
greeting, my pride is mingled with humility, and I depart as though
God's blessing rested on me. Nor does the joy vanish without leaving a
long track of light behind. It breaks on me through the clouds of my
cigarette smoke. More than ever do I feel how every drop of this
surging blood throbs for you.

Can you be ignorant how you are loved? After seeing you, I return to
my study, and the glitter of its Saracenic ornaments sinks to nothing
before the brightness of your portrait, when I open the spring that
keeps it locked up from every eye and lose myself in endless musings
or link my happiness to verse. From the heights of heaven I look down
upon the course of a life such as my hopes dare to picture it! Have
you never, in the silence of the night, or through the roar of the
town, heard the whisper of a voice in your sweet, dainty ear? Does no
one of the thousand prayers that I speed to you reach home?

By dint of silent contemplation of your pictured face, I have
succeeded in deciphering the expression of every feature and tracing
its connection with some grace of the spirit, and then I pen a sonnet
to you in Spanish on the harmony of the twofold beauty in which nature
has clothed you. These sonnets you will never see, for my poetry is
too unworthy of its theme, I dare not send it to you. Not a moment
passes without thoughts of you, for my whole being is bound up in you,
and if you ceased to be its animating principle, every part would
ache.

Now, Louise, can you realize the torture to me of knowing that I had
displeased you, while entirely ignorant of the cause? The ideal double
life which seemed so fair was cut short. My heart turned to ice within
me as, hopeless of any other explanation, I concluded that you had
ceased to love me. With heavy heart, and yet not wholly without
comfort, I was falling back upon my old post as servant; then your
letter came and turned all to joy. Oh! might I but listen for ever to
such chiding!

Once a child, picking himself up from a tumble, turned to his mother
with the words "Forgive me." Hiding his own hurt, he sought pardon for
the pain he had caused her. Louise, I was that child, and such as I
was then, I am now. Here is the key to my character, which your slave
in all humility places in your hands.

But do not fear, there will be no more stumbling. Keep tight the chain
which binds me to you, so that a touch may communicate your lightest
wish to him who will ever remain your slave,
FELIPE.



XXIV

LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO RENEE DE L'ESTORADE
October.

My dear friend,--How is it possible that you, who brought yourself in
two months to marry a broken-down invalid in order to mother him,
should know anything of that terrible shifting drama, enacted in the
recesses of the heart, which we call love--a drama where death lies in
a glance or a light reply?

I had reserved for Felipe one last supreme test which was to be
decisive. I wanted to know whether his love was the love of a Royalist
for his King, who can do no wrong. Why should the loyalty of a
Catholic be less supreme?

He walked with me a whole night under the limes at the bottom of the
garden, and not a shadow of suspicion crossed his soul. Next day he
loved me better, but the feeling was as reverent, as humble, as
regretful as ever; he had not presumed an iota. Oh! he is a very
Spaniard, a very Abencerrage. He scaled my wall to come and kiss the
hand which in the darkness I reached down to him from my balcony. He
might have broken his neck; how many of our young men would do the
like?

But all this is nothing; Christians suffer the horrible pangs of
martyrdom in the hope of heaven. The day before yesterday I took aside
the royal ambassador-to-be at the court of Spain, my much respected
father, and said to him with a smile:

"Sir, some of your friends will have it that you are marrying your
dear Armande to the nephew of an ambassador who has been very anxious
for this connection, and has long begged for it. Also, that the
marriage-contract arranges for his nephew to succeed on his death to
his enormous fortune and his title, and bestows on the young couple in
the meantime an income of a hundred thousand livres, on the bride a
dowry of eight hundred thousand francs. Your daughter weeps, but bows
to the unquestioned authority of her honored parent. Some people are
unkind enough to say that, behind her tears, she conceals a worldly
and ambitious soul.

"Now, we are going to the gentleman's box at the Opera to-night, and
M. le Baron de Macumer will visit us there."

"Macumer needs a touch of the spur then," said my father, smiling at
me, as though I were a female ambassador.

"You mistake Clarissa Harlowe for Figaro!" I cried, with a glance of
scorn and mockery. "When you see me with my right hand ungloved, you
will give the lie to this impertinent gossip, and will mark your
displeasure at it."

"I may make my mind easy about your future. You have no more got a
girl's headpiece than Jeanne d'Arc had a woman's heart. You will be
happy, you will love nobody, and will allow yourself to be loved."

This was too much. I burst into laughter.

"What is it, little flirt?" he said.

"I tremble for my country's interests . . ."

And seeing him look quite blank, I added:

"At Madrid!"

"You have no idea how this little nun has learned, in a year's time,
to make fun of her father," he said to the Duchess.

"Armande makes light of everything," my mother replied, looking me in
the face.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Why, you are not even afraid of rheumatism on these damp nights," she
said, with another meaning glance at me.

"Oh!" I answered, "the mornings are so hot!"

The Duchess looked down.

"It's high time she were married," said my father, "and it had better
be before I go."

"If you wish it," I replied demurely.

Two hours later, my mother and I, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and
Mme. d'Espard, were all four blooming like roses in the front of the
box. I had seated myself sideways, giving only a shoulder to the
house, so that I could see everything, myself unseen, in that spacious
box which fills one of the two angles at the back of the hall, between
the columns.

Macumer came, stood up, and put his opera-glasses before his eyes so
that he might be able to look at me comfortably.

In the first interval entered the young man whom I call "king of the
profligates." The Comte Henri de Marsay, who has great beauty of an
effeminate kind, entered the box with an epigram in his eyes, a smile
upon his lips, and an air of satisfaction over his whole countenance.
He first greeted my mother, Mme. d'Espard, and the Duchesse de
Maufrigneuse, the Comte d'Esgrignon, and M. de Canalis; then turning
to me, he said:

"I do not know whether I shall be the first to congratulate you on an
event which will make you the object of envy to many."

"Ah! a marriage!" I cried. "Is it left for me, a girl fresh from the
convent, to tell you that predicted marriages never come off."

M. de Marsay bent down, whispering to Macumer, and I was convinced,
from the movement of his lips, that what he said was this:

"Baron, you are perhaps in love with that little coquette, who has
used you for her own ends; but as the question is one not of love, but
of marriage, it is as well for you to know what is going on."

Macumer treated this officious scandal-monger to one of those glances
of his which seem to me so eloquent of noble scorn, and replied to the
effect that he was "not in love with any little coquette." His whole
bearing so delighted me, that directly I caught sight of my father,
the glove was off.

Felipe had not a shadow of fear or doubt. How well did he bear out my
expectations! His faith is only in me, society cannot hurt him with
its lies. Not a muscle of the Arab's face stirred, not a drop of the
blue blood flushed his olive cheek.

The two young counts went out, and I said, laughing, to Macumer:

"M. de Marsay has been treating you to an epigram on me."

"He did more," he replied. "It was an epithalamium."

"You speak Greek to me," I said, rewarding him with a smile and a
certain look which always embarrasses him.

My father meantime was talking to Mme. de Maufrigneuse.

"I should think so!" he exclaimed. "The gossip which gets about is
scandalous. No sooner has a girl come out than everyone is keen to
marry her, and the ridiculous stories that are invented! I shall never
force Armande to marry against her will. I am going to take a turn in
the promenade, otherwise people will be saying that I allowed the
rumor to spread in order to suggest the marriage to the ambassador;
and Caesar's daughter ought to be above suspicion, even more than his
wife--if that were possible."

The Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and Mme. d'Espard shot glances first at
my mother, then at the Baron, brimming over with sly intelligence and
repressed curiosity. With their serpent's cunning they had at last got
an inkling of something going on. Of all mysteries in life, love is
the least mysterious! It exhales from women, I believe, like a
perfume, and she who can conceal it is a very monster! Our eyes
prattle even more than our tongues.

Having enjoyed the delightful sensation of finding Felipe rise to the
occasion, as I had wished, it was only in nature I should hunger for
more. So I made the signal agreed on for telling him that he might
come to my window by the dangerous road you know of. A few hours later
I found him, upright as a statue, glued to the wall, his hand resting
on the balcony of my window, studying the reflections of the light in
my room.

"My dear Felipe," I said, "You have acquitted yourself well to-night;
you behaved exactly as I should have done had I been told that you
were on the point of marrying."

"I thought," he replied, "that you would hardly have told others
before me."

"And what right have you to this privilege?"

"The right of one who is your devoted slave."

"In very truth?"

"I am, and shall ever remain so."

"But suppose this marriage was inevitable; suppose that I had
agreed . . ."

Two flashing glances lit up the moonlight--one directed to me, the
other to the precipice which the wall made for us. He seemed to
calculate whether a fall together would mean death; but the thought
merely passed like lightning over his face and sparkled in his eyes. A
power, stronger than passion, checked the impulse.

"An Arab cannot take back his word," he said in a husky voice. "I am
your slave to do with as you will; my life is not mine to destroy."

The hand on the balcony seemed as though its hold were relaxing. I
placed mine on it as I said:

"Felipe, my beloved, from this moment I am your wife in thought and
will. Go in the morning to ask my father for my hand. He wishes to
retain my fortune; but if you promise to acknowledge receipt of it in
the contract, his consent will no doubt be given. I am no longer
Armande de Chaulieu. Leave me at once; no breath of scandal must touch
Louise de Macumer."

He listened with blanched face and trembling limbs, then, like a
flash, had cleared the ten feet to the ground in safety. It was a
moment of agony, but he waved his hand to me and disappeared.

"I am loved then," I said to myself, "as never woman was before." And
I fell asleep in the calm content of a child, my destiny for ever
fixed.

About two o'clock next day my father summoned me to his private room,
where I found the Duchess and Macumer. There was an interchange of
civilities. I replied quite simply that if my father and M. Henarez
were of one mind, I had no reason to oppose their wishes. Thereupon my
mother invited the Baron to dinner; and after dinner, we all four went
for a drive in the Bois de Boulogne, where I had the pleasure of
smiling ironically to M. de Marsay as he passed on horseback and
caught sight of Macumer sitting opposite to us beside my father.

My bewitching Felipe has had his cards reprinted as follows:

HENAREZ

(Baron de Macumer, formerly Duc de Soria.)

Every morning he brings me with his own hands a splendid bouquet,
hidden in which I never fail to find a letter, containing a Spanish
sonnet in my honor, which he has composed during the night.

Not to make this letter inordinately large, I send you as specimens
only the first and last of these sonnets, which I have translated for
your benefit, word for word, and line for line:--

FIRST SONNET

Many a time I've stood, clad in thin silken vest,
Drawn sword in hand, with steady pulse,
Waiting the charge of a raging bull,
And the thrust of his horn, sharper-pointed than Phoebe's crescent.

I've scaled, on my lips the lilt of an Andalusian dance,
The steep redoubt under a rain of fire;
I've staked my life upon a hazard of the dice
Careless, as though it were a gold doubloon.

My hand would seek the ball out of the cannon's mouth,
But now meseems I grow more timid than a crouching hair,
Or a child spying some ghost in the curtain's folds.

For when your sweet eye rests on me,
Any icy sweat covers my brow, my knees give way,
I tremble, shrink, my courage gone.

SECOND SONNET

Last night I fain would sleep to dream of thee,
But jealous sleep fled my eyelids,
I sought the balcony and looked towards heaven,
Always my glance flies upward when I think of thee.

Strange sight! whose meaning love alone can tell,
The sky had lost its sapphire hue,
The stars, dulled diamonds in their golden mount,
Twinkled no more nor shed their warmth.

The moon, washed of her silver radiance lily-white,
Hung mourning over the gloomy plain, for thou hast robbed
The heavens of all that made them bright.

The snowy sparkle of the moon is on thy lovely brow,
Heaven's azure centres in thine eyes,
Thy lashes fall like starry rays.

What more gracious way of saying to a young girl that she fills your
life? Tell me what you think of this love, which expends itself in
lavishing the treasures alike of the earth and of the soul. Only
within the last ten days have I grasped the meaning of that Spanish
gallantry, so famous in old days.

Ah me! dear, what is going on now at La Crampade? How often do I take
a stroll there, inspecting the growth of our crops! Have you no news
to give of our mulberry trees, our last winter's plantations? Does
everything prosper as you wish? And while the buds are opening on our
shrubs--I will not venture to speak of the bedding-out plants--have
they also blossomed in the bosom of the wife? Does Louis continue his
policy of madrigals? Do you enter into each other's thoughts? I wonder
whether your little runlet of wedding peace is better than the raging
torrent of my love! Has my sweet lady professor taken offence? I
cannot believe it; and if it were so, I should send Felipe off at
once, post-haste, to fling himself at her knees and bring back to me
my pardon or her head. Sweet love, my life here is a splendid success,
and I want to know how it fares with life in Provence. We have just
increased our family by the addition of a Spaniard with the complexion
of a Havana cigar, and your congratulations still tarry.

Seriously, my sweet Renee, I am anxious. I am afraid lest you should
be eating your heart out in silence, for fear of casting a gloom over
my sunshine. Write to me at once, naughty child! and tell me your life
in its every minutest detail; tell me whether you still hold back,
whether your "independence" still stands erect, or has fallen on its
knees, or is sitting down comfortably, which would indeed be serious.
Can you suppose that the incidents of your married life are without
interest for me? I muse at times over all that you have said to me.
Often when, at the Opera, I seem absorbed in watching the pirouetting
dancers, I am saying to myself, "It is half-past nine, perhaps she is
in bed. What is she about? Is she happy? Is she alone with her
independence? or has her independence gone the way of other dead and
castoff independences?"

A thousand loves.



XXV

RENEE DE L'ESTORADE TO LOUISE DE CHAULIEU

Saucy girl! Why should I write? What could I say? Whilst your life is
varied by social festivities, as well as by the anguish, the tempers,
and the flowers of love--all of which you describe so graphically,
that I might be watching some first-rate acting at the theatre--mine
is as monotonous and regular as though it were passed in a convent.

We always go to bed at nine and get up with daybreak. Our meals are
served with a maddening punctuality. Nothing ever happens. I have
accustomed myself without much difficulty to this mapping out of the
day, which perhaps is, after all, in the nature of things. Where would
the life of the universe be but for that subjection to fixed laws
which, according to the astronomers, so Louis tells me, rule the
spheres! It is not order of which we weary.

Then I have laid upon myself certain rules of dress, and these occupy
my time in the mornings. I hold it part of my duty as a wife to look
as charming as possible. I feel a certain satisfaction in it, and it
causes lively pleasure to the good old man and to Louis. After lunch,
we walk. When the newspapers arrive, I disappear to look after my
household affairs or to read--for I read a great deal--or to write to
you. I come back to the others an hour before dinner; and after dinner
we play cards, or receive visits, or pay them. Thus my days pass
between a contented old man, who has done with passions, and the man
who owes his happiness to me. Louis' happiness is so radiant that it
has at last warmed my heart.