“Strange, isn’t it, for a fallen minister?” replied my mother.

I had sufficient presence of mind myself to regard with curiosity Mmes. de Maufrigneuse and d’Espard and my mother, as though they were talking a foreign language and I wanted to know what it was all about, but inwardly my soul sank in the waves of an intoxicating joy.  There is only one word to express what I felt, and that is:  rapture.  Such love as Felipe’s surely makes him worthy of mine.  I am the very breath of his life, my hands hold the thread that guides his thoughts.  To be quite frank, I have a mad longing to see him clear every obstacle and stand before me, asking boldly for my hand.  Then I should know whether this storm of love would sink to placid calm at a glance from me.

Ah! my dear, I stopped here, and I am still all in a tremble.  As I wrote, I heard a slight noise outside, and rose to see what it was.  From my window I could see him coming along the ridge of the wall at the risk of his life.  I went to the bedroom window and made him a sign, it was enough; he leaped from the wall—­ten feet—­and then ran along the road, as far as I could see him, in order to show me that he was not hurt.  That he should think of my fear at the moment when he must have been stunned by his fall, moved me so much that I am still crying; I don’t know why.  Poor ungainly man! what was he coming for? what had he to say to me?

I dare not write my thoughts, and shall go to bed joyful, thinking of all that we would say if we were together.  Farewell, fair silent one.  I have not time to scold you for not writing, but it is more than a month since I have heard from you!  Does this mean that you are at last happy?  Have you lost the “complete independence” which you were so proud of, and which to-night has so nearly played me false?

XX

RENEE DE L’ESTORADE TO LOUISE DE CHAULIEU
May.

If love be the life of the world, why do austere philosophers count it for nothing in marriage?  Why should Society take for its first law that the woman must be sacrificed to the family, introducing thus a note of discord into the very heart of marriage?  And this discord was foreseen, since it was to meet the dangers arising from it that men were armed with new-found powers against us.  But for these, we should have been able to bring their whole theory to nothing, whether by the force of love or of a secret, persistent aversion.

I see in marriage, as it at present exists, two opposing forces which it was the task of the lawgiver to reconcile.  “When will they be reconciled?” I said to myself, as I read your letter.  Oh! my dear, one such letter alone is enough to overthrow the whole fabric constructed by the sage of Aveyron, under whose shelter I had so cheerfully ensconced myself!  The laws were made by old men—­any woman can see that—­and they have been prudent enough to decree that conjugal love, apart from passion, is not degrading, and that a woman in yielding herself may dispense with the sanction of love, provided the man can legally call her his.  In their exclusive concern for the family they have imitated Nature, whose one care is to propagate the species.