for it was all thoughts, all forces, it was the future itself in a shared emotion.  I felt I was but half a mother.  Falling thus upon my heart this thunderbolt awoke desires which slumbered there without my knowledge; suddenly I divined all that my aunt had meant when she kissed my forehead, murmuring, “Poor Henriette!”

When I returned to Clochegourde, the springtime, the first leaves, the fragrance of the flowers, the white and fleecy clouds, the Indre, the sky, all spoke to me in a language till then unknown.  If you have forgotten those terrible kisses, I have never been able to efface them from my memory,—­I am dying of them!  Yes, each time that I have met you since, their impress is revived.  I was shaken from head to foot when I first saw you; the mere presentiment of your coming overcame me.  Neither time nor my firm will has enabled me to conquer that imperious sense of pleasure.  I asked myself involuntarily, “What must be such joys?” Our mutual looks, the respectful kisses you laid upon my hand, the pressure of my arm on yours, your voice with its tender tones,—­all, even the slightest things, shook me so violently that clouds obscured my sight; the murmur of rebellious senses filled my ears.  Ah! if in those moments when outwardly I increased my coldness you had taken me in your arms I should have died of happiness.  Sometimes I desired it, but prayer subdued the evil thought.  Your name uttered by my children filled my heart with warmer blood, which gave color to my cheeks; I laid snares for my poor Madeleine to induce her to say it, so much did I love the tumults of that sensation.  Ah! what shall I say to you?  Your writing had a charm; I gazed at your letters as we look at a portrait.

If on that first day you obtained some fatal power over me, conceive, dear friend, how infinite that power became when it was given to me to read your soul.  What delights filled me when I found you so pure, so absolutely truthful, gifted with noble qualities, capable of noblest things, and already so tried!  Man and child, timid yet brave!  What joy to find we both were consecrated by a common grief!  Ever since that evening when we confided our childhoods to each other, I have known that to lose you would be death,—­yes, I have kept you by me selfishly.  The certainty felt by Monsieur de la Berge that I should die if I lost you touched him deeply, for he read my soul.  He knew how necessary I was to my children and the count; he did not command me to forbid you my house, for I promised to continue pure in deed and thought.  “Thought,” he said to me, “is involuntary, but it can be watched even in the midst of anguish.”  “If I think,” I replied, “all will be lost; save me from myself.  Let him remain beside me and keep me pure!” The good old man, though stern, was moved by my sincerity.  “Love him as you would a son, and give him your daughter,” he said.  I accepted bravely that life of suffering that I might not lose you,