Adieu, adieu, my Valentine, write to me, a line from you is happiness.

Irene de Chateaudun.

My address is,
Madame Albert Guerin,
Care Mme. Taverneau, Pont de l’Arche,
Department of the Eure.

II.

ROGER DE MONBERT to M. DE MEILHAN, Pont-de-l’Arche (Eure.)

Paris, May 19th, 18—.

Dear Edgar,—­It cannot be denied that friendship is the refuge of adversity—­the roof that shelters from the storm.

In my prosperous days I never wrote you.  Happiness is selfish.  We fear to distress a friend who may be in sorrow, by sending him a picture of our own bliss.

I am oppressed with a double burden; your absence, and my misfortunes.

This introduction will, doubtless, impress you with the idea that I wander about Paris with dejected visage and neglected dress.  Undeceive yourself.  It is one of my principles never to expose my sacred griefs to the gaze of an unsympathetic world, that only looks to laugh.

Pity I regard as an insult to my pride:  the comforter humiliates the inconsolable mourner; besides, there are sorrows that all pretend to understand, but which none really appreciate.  It is useless, then, to enumerate one’s maladies to a would-be physician; and the world is filled with those who delight in the miseries of others; who follow the sittings of courts and luxuriate in heart-rending pictures of man’s injustice to his fellow.

I do not care to serve as a relaxation to this class of mankind, who, since the abolition of the circus and amphitheatre, are compelled to pick up their pleasure wherever they can find it; seeking the best places to witness the struggle of Christian fortitude with adversity.

But every civilized age has its savage manners, and, knowing this, I resemble in public the favorite of fortune.  I simulate content, and my face is radiant with deceit.

The idle and curious of the Boulevard Italien, the benches of the circus would hardly recognise me as the gladiator struggling with an iron-clawed monster—­they are all deceived.

I feel a repugnance, dear Edgar, to entertaining you with a recital of my mysterious sorrow.  I would prefer to leave you in ignorance, or let you divine them, but I explain to prevent your friendship imagining afflictions that are not mine.

In the first place, to reassure you, my fortune has not suffered during my absence.  On my return to Paris, my agent dazzled me with the picture of my wealth.

“Happy man!” said he; “a great name, a large fortune, health that has defied the fires of the tropics, the ice of the poles,—­and only thirty!” The notary reasoned well from a notary’s stand-point.  If I were to reduce my possessions to ingots, they would certainly balance a notary’s estimate of happiness; therefore, fear nothing for my fortune.