I am going to leave France, change worlds and skies.  My passage is taken for America.  The murmur of ocean and forest must soothe my despair.  A great sorrow requires immensity.  I would suffocate here.  I should expect, at every turn, to see your white dress gleaming among the trees.  Richeport is too much associated with you for me to dwell here longer; your memory has exiled me from it for ever.  I must put a huge impossibility between myself and you; six thousand miles hardly suffice to separate us.

If I remained, I should resort to all manner of mad schemes to recover my happiness; no one gives up his cherished dream with more reluctance than I, especially when a word could make it a reality.

Louise, Louise, why do you avoid me and close your heart against me!  You have not understood, perhaps, how much I love you?  Has not my devotion shone in my eyes?  I have not been able, perhaps, to convey to you what I felt?  You have no more comprehended my adoration than the insensate idol the prayers of the faithful prostrated before it.

Nevertheless, I was convinced that I could make you happy; I thought that I appreciated the longings of your soul, and would be able to satisfy them all.

What crime have I committed against heaven to be punished with this biting despair?  Perhaps I have failed to appreciate some sincere affection, repulsed unwittingly some simple, tender heart that your coldness now avenges; perhaps you are, unconsciously, the Nemesis of some forgotten fault.

How fearful it is to suffer from rejected love!  To say to oneself:  “The loved one exists, far from me, without me; she is young, smiling, lovely—­to others; my despair is only an annoyance to her, I am necessary to her in nothing; my absence leaves no void in her life; my death would only provoke from her an expression of careless pity; my good and noble qualities have made no impression upon her; my verses, the delight of other young hearts, she has never read; my talents are as destructive to me as if they were crimes; why seek a hell in another world; is it not here?”

And besides, what infinite tenderness, what perpetual care, what timid and loving persistence, what obedience to every unexpressed wish, what prompt realization of even the slightest fancy! for what! for a careless glance, a smile that the thought of another brings to her lips!  How can it be helped! he who is not beloved is always in the wrong.

I go away, carrying the iron in my wound; I will not drag it out, I prefer to die with it.  May you live happy, may the fearful suffering that you have caused me never be expiated.  I would have it so; society punishes murder of the body, heaven punishes murders of the soul.  May your hidden assassination escape Divine vengeance as long as possible.

Farewell, Louise, farewell.

EDGAR DE MEILHAN.

XXVIII.