Between these two letters I found a little note without any address, which seemed as if it had been slipped in as an after-thought.  I was not slow to see that it was from the one person in the world who was of real interest to me.  Yet I had not the courage to open it.  I walked up and down the sandy beach, turning over this little piece of paper in my hands, fearful that by reading it I might destroy the kind of desperate calm my resolution had given me.  Above all, I dreaded lest it might contain expressions of thanks and enthusiastic joy, behind which I should have divined the rapture of contented love for another.

“What can she be writing to me about?” I said to myself.  “Why does she write at all?  I do not want her pity, still less her gratitude.”

I felt tempted to throw this fateful little note into the sea.  Once, indeed I held it out over the waves, but I immediately pressed it to my bosom, and kept it hidden there a few moments as if I had been a believer in that second sight preached by the advocates of magnetism, who assert that they can read with the organs of feeling and thought as well as with their eyes.

At last I resolved to break the seal.  The words I read were these: 

“You have done well, Bernard; but I give you no thanks, as your absence will cause me more suffering than I can tell.  Still, go wherever honour and love of truth call you; you will always be followed by my good wishes and prayers.  Return when your mission is accomplished; you will find me neither married nor in a convent.”

In this note she had inclosed the cornelian ring she had given me during my illness and which I had returned on leaving Paris.  I had a little gold box made to hold this ring and note, and I wore it near my heart as a talisman.  Lafayette, who had been arrested in France by order of the Government, which was opposed to his expedition, soon came and joined us after escaping from prison.  I had had time to make my preparations, and I sailed full of melancholy, ambition, and hope.

You will not expect me to give an account of the American war.  Once again I will separate my existence from the events of history as I relate my own adventures.  Here, however, I shall suppress even my personal adventures; in my memory these form a special chapter in which Edmee plays the part of a Madonna, constantly invoked but invisible.  I cannot think that you would be the least interested in listening to a portion of my narrative from which this angelic figure, the only one worthy of your attention, firstly by reason of her own worth, and then from her influence on myself, was entirely absent.  I will only state that from the humble position which I gladly accepted in the beginning in Washington’s army, I rose regularly but rapidly to the rank of officer.  My military education did not take long.  Into this, as into everything that I have undertaken during my life, I put my whole soul, and through the pertinacity of my will I overcame all obstacles.