I shall shock you, my friend, when I tell you the reason for this demand.  It is not poetic, as you imagined, but practical.  I am afraid, not of you, but of some mischance.  I am guilty.  I do not wish my fault to affect others than myself.

Understand me well.  You and I may both die.  You might fall off your horse, since you ride every day; you might die from a sudden attack, from a duel, from heart disease, from a carriage accident, in a thousand ways.  For, if there is only one death, there are more ways of its reaching us than there are days or us to live.

Then your sisters, your brother, or your sister-in-law might find my letters!  Do you think that they love me?  I doubt it.  And then, even if they adored me, is it possible for two women and one man to know a secret—­such a secret!—­and not to tell of it?

   I seem to be saying very disagreeable things, speaking first of your
   death, and then suspecting the discreetness of your relatives.

   But don’t all of us die sooner or later?  And it is almost certain
   that one of us will precede the other under the ground.  We must
   therefore foresee all dangers, even that one.

As for me, I will keep your letters beside mine, in the secret of my little desk.  I will show them to you there, sleeping side by side in their silken hiding place, full of our love, like lovers in a tomb.

   You will say to me:  “But if you should die first, my dear, your
   husband will find these letters.”

   Oh!  I fear nothing.  First of all, he does not know the secret of my
   desk, and then he will not look for it.  And even if he finds it
   after my death, I fear nothing.

   Did you ever stop to think of all the love letters that have been
   found after death?  I have been thinking of this for a long time,
   and that is the reason I decided to ask you for my letters.

Think that never, do you understand, never, does a woman burn, tear or destroy the letters in which it is told her that she is loved.  That is our whole life, our whole hope, expectation and dream.  These little papers which bear our name in caressing terms are relics which we adore; they are chapels in which we are the saints.  Our love letters are our titles to beauty, grace, seduction, the intimate vanity of our womanhood; they are the treasures of our heart.  No, a woman does not destroy these secret and delicious archives of her life.

   But, like everybody else, we die, and then—­then these letters
   are found!  Who finds them?  The husband.  Then what does he do? 
   Nothing.  He burns them.