Dear Renee, do you remember how, in your outbursts of girlish devotion, you would say to me, as we sat under the vine-covered arbor of the convent garden, “I love you so, Louise, that if God appeared to me in a vision, I would pray Him that all the sorrows of life might be mine, and all the joy yours.  I burn to suffer for you”?  Now, darling, the day has come when I take up your prayer, imploring Heaven to grant you a share in my happiness.

I must tell you my idea.  I have a shrewd notion that you are hatching ambitious plans under the name of Louis de l’Estorade.  Very good; get him elected deputy at the approaching election, for he will be very nearly forty then; and as the Chamber does not meet till six months later, he will have just attained the age necessary to qualify for a seat.  You will come to Paris—­there, isn’t that enough?  My father, and the friends I shall have made by that time, will learn to know and admire you; and if your father-in-law will agree to found a family, we will get the title of Comte for Louis.  That is something at least!  And we shall be together.

XXVIII

RENEE DE L’ESTORADE TO LOUISE DE MACUMER
December.

My thrice happy Louise, your letter made me dizzy.  For a few moments I held it in my listless hands, while a tear or two sparkled on it in the setting sun.  I was alone beneath the small barren rock where I have had a seat placed; far off, like a lance of steel, the Mediterranean shone.  The seat is shaded by aromatic shrubs, and I have had a very large jessamine, some honeysuckle, and Spanish brooms transplanted there, so that some day the rock will be entirely covered with climbing plants.  The wild vine has already taken root there.  But winter draws near, and all this greenery is faded like a piece of old tapestry.  In this spot I am never molested; it is understood that here I wish to be alone.  It is named Louise’s seat—­a proof, is it not, that even in solitude I am not alone here?

If I tell you all these details, to you so paltry, and try to describe the vision of green with which my prophetic gaze clothes this bare rock—­on which top some freak of nature has set up a magnificent parasol pine—­it is because in all this I have found an emblem to which I cling.

It was while your blessed lot was filling me with joy and—­must I confess it?—­with bitter envy too, that I felt the first movement of my child within, and this mystery of physical life reacted upon the inner recesses of my soul.  This indefinable sensation, which partakes of the nature at once of a warning, a delight, a pain, a promise, and a fulfilment; this joy, which is mine alone, unshared by mortal, this wonder of wonders, has whispered to me that one day this rock shall be a carpet of flowers, resounding to the merry laughter of children, that I shall at last be blessed among women, and from me shall spring forth fountains of life.  Now I know what I have lived for!  Thus the first certainty of bearing within me another life brought healing to my wounds.  A joy that beggars description has crowned for me those long days of sacrifice, in which Louis had already found his.