He left me in a spasm of involuntary self-pity.  After dinner I returned for news of Madame de Mortsauf, who was already better.  If such were the joys of marriage, if such scenes were frequent, how could she survive them long?  What slow, unpunished murder was this?  During that day I understood the tortures by which the count was wearing out his wife.  Before what tribunal can we arraign such crimes?  These thoughts stunned me; I could say nothing to Henriette by word of mouth, but I spent the night in writing to her.  Of the three or four letters that I wrote I have kept only the beginning of one, with which I was not satisfied.  Here it is, for though it seems to me to express nothing, and to speak too much of myself when I ought only to have thought of her, it will serve to show you the state my soul was in:—­

  To Madame de Mortsauf: 

How many things I had to say to you when I reached the house!  I thought of them on the way, but I forgot them in your presence.  Yes, when I see you, dear Henriette, I find my thoughts no longer in keeping with the light from your soul which heightens your beauty; then, too, the happiness of being near you is so ineffable as to efface all other feelings.  Each time we meet I am born into a broader life; I am like the traveller who climbs a rock and sees before him a new horizon.  Each time you talk with me I add new treasures to my treasury.  There lies, I think, the secret of long and inexhaustible affections.  I can only speak to you of yourself when away from you.  In your presence I am too dazzled to see, too happy to question my happiness, too full of you to be myself, too eloquent through you to speak, too eager in seizing the present moment to remember the past.  You must think of this state of intoxication and forgive me its consequent mistakes.

When near you I can only feel.  Yet, I have courage to say, dear Henriette, that never, in all the many joys you have given me, never did I taste such joy as filled my soul when, after that dreadful storm through which you struggled with superhuman courage, you came to yourself alone with me, in the twilight of your chamber where that unhappy scene had brought me.  I alone know the light that shines from a woman when through the portals of death she re-enters life with the dawn of a rebirth tinting her brow.  What harmonies were in your voice!  How words, even your words, seemed paltry when the sound of that adored voice—­in itself the echo of past pains mingled with divine consolations —­blessed me with the gift of your first thought.  I knew you were brilliant with all human splendor, but yesterday I found a new Henriette, who might be mine if God so willed; I beheld a spirit freed from the bodily trammels which repress the ardors of the soul.  Ah! thou wert beautiful indeed in thy weakness, majestic in thy prostration.  Yesterday I found something more beautiful than thy beauty, sweeter than thy voice;