EDGAR DE MEILHAN.

XXXIV.

RAYMOND DE VILLIERS to MME. LA VICOMTESSE DE BRAIMES,
Hotel de la Prefecture, Grenoble (Isere).

Paris, Aug. 11th 18—.

This is probably the last letter that I shall ever write to you.  Do not pity me, my fate is more worthy of envy than of pity.  I never knew, I never dreamed of anything more beautiful.  It has been said time and again that real life is tame, spiritless and disenchanted by the side of the fictions of the poets.  What a mistake!  There is a more wonderful inventor than any rhapsodist, and that inventor is called reality.  It wears the magic ring, and imagination is but a poor magician compared with it.  Madame, do not write to Mademoiselle de Chateaudun.  Since you have not done so my letters must necessarily have miscarried.  Blessed be the happy chance which prevented you from following my advice!  What did I say to you?  I was a fool.  Be careful not to alarm my darling.  The man has lived long enough upon whom she has bestowed her love for one single day.  Do not write, it is too late; but admire the decrees of fate.  The diamond that I had sought with the Prince de Monbert, I have unwittingly found; I assisted in searching for it, while it was hid, unknown to me, in my heart.  Louise is Irene.  Madame Guerin is Mademoiselle de Chateaudun.  If you could have seen her delight in revealing her identity!  I saw her joyful and triumphant as if her love were not the most precious gift she could bestow.  When she proclaimed herself, I felt an icy chill pass through me; but I thanked God for the bliss which I shall not survive, so great that death must follow after.

“Do you not love me well enough,” she said, “to pardon me my fortune?”

How was she to know that in revealing herself she had signed my death-warrant?

She spoke, laughingly, of M. de Monbert, as she had done of Edgar; to excuse herself she related a story of disenchantment which you already know, madame.  It would have been honorable in me, at this juncture, to have undeceived Irene and enlightened her upon the Prince’s passion.  I did so, but feebly.  When happiness is offered us loaded with ball, we have no longer the right to be generous.

We are to be married privately to-morrow, without noise or display.  A plain-looking carriage will wait for us on the Place de la Madeleine; immediately on leaving the church we shall set out for Villiers.  M. de Meilhan is at Richeport.  M. de Monbert is in Brittany.  Eight days must elapse before the news can reach them.  Thus I have before me eight days of holy intoxication.  What man has ever been able to say as much?

Recall to mind the words of one of your poet friends; It is better to die young and restore to God, your judge, a heart pure and full of illusions.  Your poet is right; only it is more ecstatic to die in the arms of happiness, and to be buried with the flower of a love which has not yet faded.