At Briare we had breakfast in the carriage.  Then followed a talk like our old talks at Blois, while the same Loire we used to admire called forth our praises, and at half-past seven we entered the noble long avenue of lime-trees, acacias, sycamores, and larches which leads to Chantepleurs.  At eight we dined; at ten we were in our bedroom, a charming Gothic room, made comfortable with every modern luxury.  Felipe, who is thought so ugly, seemed to me quite beautiful in his graceful kindness and the exquisite delicacy of his affection.  Of passion, not a trace.  All through the journey he might have been an old friend of fifteen years’ standing.  Later, he has described to me, with all the vivid touches of his first letter, the furious storms that raged within and were not allowed to ruffle the outer surface.

“So far, I have found nothing very terrible in marriage,” I said, as I walked to the window and looked out on the glorious moon which lit up a charming park, breathing of heavy scents.

He drew near, put his arm again round me, and said: 

“Why fear it?  Have I ever yet proved false to my promise in gesture or look?  Why should I be false in the future?”

Yet never were words or glances more full of mastery; his voice thrilled every fibre of my heart and roused a sleeping force; his eyes were like the sun in power.

“Oh!” I exclaimed, “what a world of Moorish perfidy in this attitude of perpetual prostration!”

He understood, my dear.

So, my fair sweetheart, if I have let months slip by without writing, you can now divine the cause.  I have to recall the girl’s strange past in order to explain the woman to myself.  Renee, I understand you now.  Not to her dearest friend, not to her mother, not, perhaps, even to herself, can a happy bride speak of her happiness.  This memory ought to remain absolutely her own, an added rapture—­a thing beyond words, too sacred for disclosure!

Is it possible that the name of duty has been given to the delicious frenzy of the heart, to the overwhelming rush of passion?  And for what purpose?  What malevolent power conceived the idea of crushing a woman’s sensitive delicacy and all the thousand wiles of her modesty under the fetters of constraint?  What sense of duty can force from her these flowers of the heart, the roses of life, the passionate poetry of her nature, apart from love?  To claim feeling as a right!  Why, it blooms of itself under the sun of love, and shrivels to death under the cold blast of distaste and aversion!  Let love guard his own rights!

Oh! my noble Renee!  I understand you now.  I bow to your greatness, amazed at the depth and clearness of your insight.  Yes, the woman who has not used the marriage ceremony, as I have done, merely to legalize and publish the secret election of her heart, has nothing left but to fly to motherhood.  When earth fails, the soul makes for heaven!