Heaven preserve you from jealousy!  I do not mean to honor by this name that fickle, unjust, common-place sentiment that we feel when our vanity assumes the form of love.  The jealousy that gnaws my heart is a noble and legitimate passion.  Not to avenge one’s self is to give a premium of encouragement to wicked deeds.  The forgiveness of wrongs and injuries puts certain men and women too much at their ease.  Vengeance is necessary for the protection of society.

Dear Edgar, tell me of your love; fear not to wound me by a picture of your happiness; my heart is too sympathetic for that.  Tell me the traits that please you most in the object of your tenderness.  Let your soul expand in her sweet smiles—­revel in the intoxicating bliss of those long happy talks filled with the enchanting grace and music of a first love.

After reading my letter, remove my gloomy picture from your mind—­forget me quietly; let not a thought of my misery mar your present happiness.

I intend to honor the handsome Leon by devoting my personal attention to his future fate.

ROGER DE MONBERT.

XVI.

EDGAR DE MEILHAN to the PRINCE DE MONBERT,
St. Dominique Street (Paris).

RICHEPORT, June 23d 18—.

You place a confidence in the police worthy the prince you are, dear Roger; you rely upon their information with a faith that surprises and alarms me.  How do you expect the police to know anything concerning honest people?  Never having watched them, being too much occupied with scoundrels, they do not know how to go about it.  Spies and detectives are generally miserable wretches, their name even is a gross insult in our language; they are acquainted with the habits and movements of thieves, whose dens and haunts they frequent; but what means have they of fathoming the whimsical motives of a high-born young girl?  Their forte is in making a servant drunk, bribing a porter, following a carriage or standing sentinel before a door.  If Mademoiselle de Chateaudun has gone away to avoid you, she will naturally suppose that you will endeavor to follow her.  Of course, she has taken every precaution to preserve her incognita—­changing her name, for instance—­which would be sufficient to mystify the police, who, until applied to by you, have had no object in watching her movements.  The proof that the police are mistaken is the exactitude of the information that they have given you.  It is too much like the depositions of witnesses in a criminal trial, who say:  “Two years ago, at thirty-three minutes and five seconds after nine o’clock in the evening, I met, in the dark, a slender man, whose features I could not distinguish, who wore olive-green pantaloons, with a brownish tinge.”  I am very much afraid that your expedition into Burgundy will be of none avail, and that, haggard-eyed and morose, you will drop in upon a quiet family utterly amazed at your domiciliary visit.