the spirituality of the angel that is within us.  The pleasures of passion are stormy, followed by enervating anxieties which impair the vigor of the soul.  I came to the shores of the sea where such tempests rage; I have seen them too near; they have wrapped me in their clouds; the billows did not break at my feet, they caught me in a rough embrace which chilled my heart.  No!  I must escape to higher regions; I should perish on the shores of this vast sea.  I see in you, as in all others who have grieved me, the guardian of my virtue.  My life has been mingled with anguish, fortunately proportioned to my strength; it has thus been kept free from evil passions, from seductive peace, and ever near to God.  Our attachment was the mistaken attempt, the innocent effort of two children striving to satisfy their own hearts, God, and men—­folly, Felix!  Ah,” she said quickly, “what does that woman call you?”

“‘Amedee,’” I answered, “‘Felix’ is a being apart, who belongs to none but you.”

“‘Henriette’ is slow to die,” she said, with a gentle smile, “but die she will at the first effort of the humble Christian, the self-respecting mother; she whose virtue tottered yesterday and is firm to-day.  What may I say to you?  This.  My life has been, and is, consistent with itself in all its circumstances, great and small.  The heart to which the rootlets of my first affection should have clung, my mother’s heart, was closed to me, in spite of my persistence in seeking a cleft through which they might have slipped.  I was a girl; I came after the death of three boys; and I vainly strove to take their place in the hearts of my parents; the wound I gave to the family pride was never healed.  When my gloomy childhood was over and I knew my aunt, death took her from me all too soon.  Monsieur de Mortsauf, to whom I vowed myself, has repeatedly, nay without respite, smitten me, not being himself aware of it, poor man!  His love has the simple-minded egotism our children show to us.  He has no conception of the harm he does me, and he is heartily forgiven for it.  My children, those dear children who are bound to my flesh through their sufferings, to my soul by their characters, to my nature by their innocent happiness,—­those children were surely given to show me how much strength and patience a mother’s breast contains.  Yes, my children are my virtues.  You know how my heart has been harrowed for them, by them, in spite of them.  To be a mother was, for me, to buy the right to suffer.  When Hagar cried in the desert an angel came and opened a spring of living water for that poor slave; but I, when the limpid stream to which (do you remember?) you tried to guide me flowed past Clochegourde, its waters changed to bitterness for me.  Yes, the sufferings you have inflicted on my soul are terrible.  God, no doubt, will pardon those who know affection only through its pains.  But if the keenest of these pains has come to me through you, perhaps I deserved them.  God is not unjust.