Madame la Comtesse Natalie de Manerville to Monsieur le Comte Felix de Vandenesse.
Dear Count,--You received a letter from poor Madame de Mortsauf, which, you say, was of use in guiding you through the world,--a letter to which you owe your distinguished career. Permit me to finish your education.
Give up, I beg of you, a really dreadful habit; do not imitate certain widows who talk of their first husband and throw the virtues of the deceased in the face of their second. I am a Frenchwoman, dear count; I wish to marry the whole of the man Ilove, and I really cannot marry Madame de Mortsauf too. Having read your tale with all the attention it deserves,--and you know the interest I feel in you,--it seems to me that you must have wearied Lady Dudley with the perfections of Madame de Mortsauf, and done great harm to the countess by overwhelming her with the experiences of your English love. Also you have failed in tact to me, poor creature without other merit than that of pleasing you;you have given me to understand that I cannot love as Henriette or Arabella loved you. I acknowledge my imperfections; I know them;but why so roughly make me feel them?
Shall I tell you whom I pity?--the fourth woman whom you love. She will be forced to struggle against three others. Therefore, in your interests as well as in hers, I must warn you against the dangers of your tale. For myself, I renounce the laborious glory of loving you,--it needs too many virtues, Catholic or Anglican, and I have no fancy for rivalling phantoms. The virtues of the virgin of Clochegourde would dishearten any woman, however sure of herself she might be, and your intrepid English amazon discourages even a wish for that sort of happiness. No matter what a poor woman may do, she can never hope to give you the joys she will aspire to give. Neither heart nor senses can triumph against these memories of yours. I own that I have never been able to warm the sunshine chilled for you by the death of your sainted Henriette. Ihave felt you shuddering beside me.
My friend,--for you will always be my friend,--never make such confidences again; they lay bare your disillusions; they discourage love, and compel a woman to feel doubtful of herself.
Love, dear count, can only live on trustfulness. The woman who before she says a word or mounts her horse, must ask herself whether a celestial Henriette might not have spoken better, whether a rider like Arabella was not more graceful, that woman you may be very sure, will tremble in all her members. You certainly have given me a desire to receive a few of those intoxicating bouquets--but you say you will make no more. There are many other things you dare no longer do; thoughts and enjoyments you can never reawaken. No woman, and you ought to know this, will be willing to elbow in your heart the phantom whom you hold there.
You ask me to love you out of Christian charity. I could do much, I candidly admit, for charity; in fact I could do all--except love. You are sometimes wearisome and wearied; you call your dulness melancholy. Very good,--so be it; but all the same it is intolerable, and causes much cruel anxiety to one who loves you. Ihave often found the grave of that saint between us. I have searched my own heart, I know myself, and I own I do not wish to die as she did. If you tired out Lady Dudley, who is a very distinguished woman, I, who have not her passionate desires, should, I fear, turn coldly against you even sooner than she did.
Come, let us suppress love between us, inasmuch as you can find happiness only with the dead, and let us be merely friends--I wish it.
