years ago, when I embarked on a life of self-sacrifice with the despair of a shipwrecked mariner clinging to the mast of his vessel; now, as I invoke the memory of past years, I feel that I would make the same choice again.  No other guiding principle is so safe, or leads to such rich reward.  The spectacle of your life, which, for all the romance and poetry with which you invest it, still remains based on nothing but a ruthless selfishness, has helped to strengthen my convictions.  This is the last time I shall speak to you in this way; but I could not refrain from once more pleading with you when I found that your happiness had been proof against the most searching of all trials.

And one more point I must urge on you, suggested by my meditations on your retirement.  Life, whether of the body or the heart, consists in certain balanced movements.  Any excess introduced into the working of this routine gives rise either to pain or to pleasure, both of which are a mere fever of the soul, bound to be fugitive because nature is not so framed as to support it long.  But to make of life one long excess is surely to choose sickness for one’s portion.  You are sick because you maintain at the temperature of passion a feeling which marriage ought to convert into a steadying, purifying influence.

Yes, my sweet, I see it clearly now; the glory of a home consists in this very calm, this intimacy, this sharing alike of good and evil, which the vulgar ridicule.  How noble was the reply of the Duchesse de Sully, the wife of the great Sully, to some one who remarked that her husband, for all his grave exterior, did not scruple to keep a mistress.  “What of that?” she said.  “I represent the honor of the house, and should decline to play the part of a courtesan there.”

But you, Louise, who are naturally more passionate than tender, would be at once the wife and the mistress.  With the soul of a Heloise and the passions of a Saint Theresa, you slip the leash on all your impulses, so long as they are sanctioned by law; in a word, you degrade the marriage rite.  Surely the tables are turned.  The reproaches you once heaped on me for immorally, as you said, seizing the means of happiness from the very outset of my wedded life, might be directed against yourself for grasping at everything which may serve your passion.  What! must nature and society alike be in bondage to your caprice?  You are the old Louise; you have never acquired the qualities which ought to be a woman’s; self-willed and unreasonable as a girl, you introduce withal into your love the keenest and most mercenary of calculations!  Are you sure that, after all, the price you ask for your toilets is not too high?  All these precautions are to my mind very suggestive of mistrust.

Oh, dear Louise, if only you knew the sweetness of a mother’s efforts to discipline herself in kindness and gentleness to all about her!  My proud, self-sufficing temper gradually dissolved into a soft melancholy, which in turn has been swallowed up by those delights of motherhood which have been its reward.  If the early hours were toilsome, the evening will be tranquil and clear.  My dread is lest the day of your life should take the opposite course.