sees the future for you as for my children; suffer me to use that faculty for your benefit; it is a faculty, a mysterious gift bestowed by my lonely life; far from its growing weaker, I find it strengthened and exalted by solitude and silence.

I ask you in return to bestow a happiness on me; I desire to see you becoming more and more important among men, without one single success that shall bring a line of shame upon my brow; I desire that you may quickly bring your fortunes to the level of your noble name, and be able to tell me I have contributed to your advancement by something better than a wish.  This secret co-operation in your future is the only pleasure I can allow myself.  For it, I will wait and hope.

  I do not say farewell.  We are separated; you cannot put my hand to
  your lips, but you must surely know the place you hold in the
  heart of your

Henriette.

As I read this letter I felt the maternal heart beating beneath my fingers which held the paper while I was still cold from the harsh greeting of my own mother.  I understood why the countess had forbidden me to open it in Touraine; no doubt she feared that I would fall at her feet and wet them with my tears.

I now made the acquaintance of my brother Charles, who up to this time had been a stranger to me.  But in all our intercourse he showed a haughtiness which kept us apart and prevented brotherly affection.  Kindly feelings depend on similarity of soul, and there was no point of touch between us.  He preached to me dogmatically those social trifles which head or heart can see without instruction; he seemed to mistrust me.  If I had not had the inward support of my great love he would have made me awkward and stupid by affecting to believe that I knew nothing of life.  He presented me in society under the expectation that my dulness would be a foil to his qualities.  Had I not remembered the sorrows of my childhood I might have taken his protecting vanity for brotherly affection; but inward solitude produces the same effects as outward solitude; silence within our souls enables us to hear the faintest sound; the habit of taking refuge within ourselves develops a perception which discerns every quality of the affections about us.  Before I knew Madame de Mortsauf a hard look grieved me, a rough word wounded me to the heart; I bewailed these things without as yet knowing anything of a life of tenderness; whereas now, since my return from Clochegourde, I could make comparisons which perfected my instinctive perceptions.  All deductions derived only from sufferings endured are incomplete.  Happiness has a light to cast.  I now allowed myself the more willingly to be kept under the heel of primogeniture because I was not my brother’s dupe.