Mademoiselle,—Without hypocrisy or evasion, yes, if I had been
  certain that you possessed an immense fortune I should have acted
  differently. Why? I have searched for the reason; here it is. We
  have within us an inborn feeling, inordinately developed by social
  life, which drives us to the pursuit and to the possession of
  happiness. Most men confound happiness with the means that lead to
  it; money in their eyes is the chief element of happiness. I
  should, therefore, have endeavored to win you, prompted by that
  social sentiment which has in all ages made wealth a religion. At
  least, I think I should. It is not to be expected of a man still
  young that he can have the wisdom to substitute sound sense for
  the pleasure of the senses; within sight of a prey the brutal
  instincts hidden in the heart of man drive him on. Instead of that
  lesson, I should have sent you compliments and flatteries. Should
  I have kept my own esteem in so doing? I doubt it. Mademoiselle,
  in such a case success brings absolution; but happiness? That is
  another thing. Should I have distrusted my wife had I won her in
  that way? Most assuredly I should. Your advance on me would sooner
  or later have come between us. Your husband, however grand your
  fancy may make him, would have ended by reproaching you for having
  abased him. You, yourself, might have come, sooner or later, to
  despise him. The strong man forgives, but the poet whines. Such,
  mademoiselle, is the answer which my honesty compels me to make to
  you.

  And now, listen to me. You have the triumph of forcing me to
  reflect deeply,—first on you, whom I do not sufficiently know;
  next, on myself, of whom I knew too little. You have had the power
  to stir up many of the evil thoughts which crouched in my heart,
  as in all hearts; but from them something good and generous has
  come forth, and I salute you with my most fervent benedictions,
  just as at sea we salute the lighthouse which shows the rocks on
  which we were about to perish. Here is my confession, for I would
  not lose your esteem nor my own for all the treasures of earth.

  I wished to know who you are. I have just returned from Havre,
  where I saw Francoise Cochet, and followed her to Ingouville. You
  are as beautiful as the woman of a poet’s dream; but I do not know
  if you are Mademoiselle Vilquin concealed under Mademoiselle
  d’Herouville, or Mademoiselle d’Herouville hidden under
  Mademoiselle Vilquin. Though all is fair in war, I blushed at such
  spying and stopped short in my inquiries. You have roused my
  curiosity; forgive me for being somewhat of a woman; it is, I
  believe, the privilege of a poet.

  Now that I have laid bare my heart and allowed you to read it, you
  will believe in the sincerity of what I am about to add. Though
  the glimpse I had of you was all too rapid, it has sufficed to
  modify my opinion of your conduct. You are a poet and a poem, even
  more than you are a woman. Yes, there is in you something more
  precious than beauty; you are the beautiful Ideal of art, of
  fancy. The step you took, blamable as it would be in an ordinary
  young girl, allotted to an every-day destiny, has another aspect
  if endowed with the nature which I now attribute to you. Among the
  crowd of beings flung by fate into the social life of this planet
  to make up a generation there are exceptional souls. If your
  letter is the outcome of long poetic reveries on the fate which
  conventions bring to women, if, constrained by the impulse of a
  lofty and intelligent mind, you have wished to understand the life
  of a man to whom you attribute the gift of genius, to the end that
  you may create a friendship withdrawn from the ordinary relations
  of life, with a soul in communion with your own, disregarding thus
  the ordinary trammels of your sex,—then, assuredly, you are an
  exception. The law which rightly limits the actions of the crowd
  is too limited for you. But in that case, the remark in my first
  letter returns in greater force,—you have done too much or not
  enough.

  Accept once more my thanks for the service you have rendered me,
  that of compelling me to sound my heart. You have corrected in me
  the false idea, only too common in France, that marriage should be
  a means of fortune. While I struggled with my conscience a sacred
  voice spoke to me. I swore solemnly to make my fortune myself, and
  not be led by motives of cupidity in choosing the companion of my
  life. I have also reproached myself for the blamable curiosity you
  have excited in me. You have not six millions. There is no
  concealment possible in Havre for a young lady who possesses such
  a fortune; you would be discovered at once by the pack of hounds
  of great families whom I see in Paris on the hunt after heiresses,
  and who have already sent one, the grand equerry, the young duke,
  among the Vilquins. Therefore, believe me, the sentiments I have
  now expressed are fixed in my mind as a rule of life, from which I
  have abstracted all influences of romance or of actual fact. Prove
  to me, therefore, that you have one of those souls which may be
  forgiven for its disobedience to the common law, by perceiving and
  comprehending the spirit of this letter as you did that of my
  first letter. If you are destined to a middle-class life, obey the
  iron law which holds society together. Lifted in mind above other
  women, I admire you; but if you seek to obey an impulse which you
  ought to repress, I pity you. The all-wise moral of that great
  domestic epic “Clarissa Harlowe” is that legitimate and honorable
  love led the poor victim to her ruin because it was conceived,
  developed, and pursued beyond the boundaries of family restraint.
  The family, however cruel and even foolish it may be, is in the
  right against the Lovelaces. The family is Society. Believe me,
  the glory of a young girl, of a woman, must always be that of
  repressing her most ardent impulses within the narrow sphere of
  conventions. If I had a daughter able to become a Madame de Stael
  I should wish her dead at fifteen. Can you imagine a daughter of
  yours flaunting on the stage of fame, exhibiting herself to win
  the plaudits of a crowd, and not suffer anguish at the thought? No
  matter to what heights a woman can rise by the inward poetry of
  her soul, she must sacrifice the outer signs of superiority on the
  altar of her home. Her impulse, her genius, her aspirations toward
  Good, the whole poem of a young girl’s being, should belong to the
  man she accepts and the children whom she brings into the world. I
  think I perceive in you a secret desire to widen the narrow circle
  of the life to which all women are condemned, and to put love and
  passion into marriage. Ah! it is a lovely dream! it is not
  impossible; it is difficult, but if realized, may it not be to the
  despair of souls—forgive me the hackneyed word—“incompris”?

  If you seek a platonic friendship it will be to your sorrow in
  after years. If your letter was a jest, discontinue it. Perhaps
  this little romance is to end here—is it? It has not been without
  fruit. My sense of duty is aroused, and you, on your side, will
  have learned something of Society. Turn your thoughts to real
  life; throw the enthusiasms you have culled from literature into
  the virtues of your sex.

  Adieu, mademoiselle. Do me the honor to grant me your esteem.
  Having seen you, or one whom I believe to be you, I have known
  that your letter was simply natural; a flower so lovely turns to
  the sun—of poetry. Yes, love poetry as you love flowers, music,
  the grandeur of the sea, the beauties of nature; love them as an
  adornment of the soul, but remember what I have had the honor of
  telling you as to the nature of poets. Be cautious not to marry,
  as you say, a dunce, but seek the partner whom God has made for
  you. There are souls, believe me, who are fit to appreciate you,
  and to make you happy. If I were rich, if you were poor, I would
  lay my heart and my fortunes at your feet; for I believe your soul
  to be full of riches and of loyalty; to you I could confide my
  life and my honor in absolute security.

  Once more, adieu, adieu, fairest daughter of Eve the fair.

  To Monsieur de Canalis:

  My friend,—Suffer me to give you that name,—you have delighted
  me; I would not have you other than you are in this letter, the
  first—oh, may it not be the last! Who but a poet could have
  excused and understood a young girl so delicately?

  I wish to speak with the sincerity that dictated the first lines
  of your letter. And first, let me say that most fortunately you do
  not know me. I can joyfully assure you than I am neither that
  hideous Mademoiselle Vilquin nor the very noble and withered
  Mademoiselle d’Herouville who floats between twenty and forty
  years of age, unable to decide on a satisfactory date. The
  Cardinal d’Herouville flourished in the history of the Church at
  least a century before the cardinal of whom we boast as our only
  family glory,—for I take no account of lieutenant-generals, and
  abbes who write trumpery little verses.

  Moreover, I do not live in the magnificent villa Vilquin; there is
  not in my veins, thank God, the ten-millionth of a drop of that
  chilly blood which flows behind a counter. I come on one side from
  Germany, on the other from the south of France; my mind has a
  Teutonic love of reverie, my blood the vivacity of Provence. I am
  noble on my father’s and on my mother’s side. On my mother’s I
  derive from every page of the Almanach de Gotha. In short, my
  precautions are well taken. It is not in any man’s power, nor even
  in the power of the law, to unmask my incognito. I shall remain
  veiled, unknown.

  As to my person and as to my “belongings,” as the Normans say,
  make yourself easy. I am at least as handsome as the little girl
  (ignorantly happy) on whom your eyes chanced to light during your
  visit to Havre; and I do not call myself poverty-stricken,
  although ten sons of peers may not accompany me on my walks. I
  have seen the humiliating comedy of the heiress sought for her
  millions played on my account. In short, make no attempt, even on
  a wager, to reach me. Alas! though free as air, I am watched and
  guarded,—by myself, in the first place, and secondly, by people
  of nerve and courage who would not hesitate to put a knife in your
  heart if you tried to penetrate my retreat. I do not say this to
  excite your courage or stimulate your curiosity; I believe I have
  no need of such incentives to interest you and attach you to me.

  I will now reply to the second edition, considerably enlarged, of
  your first sermon.

  Will you have a confession? I said to myself when I saw you so
  distrustful, and mistaking me for Corinne (whose improvisations
  bore me dreadfully), that in all probability dozes of Muses had
  already led you, rashly curious, into their valleys, and begged
  you to taste the fruits of their boarding-school Parnassus. Oh!
  you are perfectly safe with me, my friend; I may love poetry, but
  I have no little verses in my pocket-book, and my stockings are,
  and will remain, immaculately white. You shall not be pestered
  with the “Flowers of my Heart” in one or more volumes. And,
  finally, should it ever happen that I say to you the word “Come!”
   you will not find—you know it now—an old maid, no, nor a poor
  and ugly one.

  Ah! my friend, if you only knew how I regret that you came to
  Havre! You have lowered the charm of what you call my romance. God
  alone knew the treasure I was reserving for the man noble enough,
  and trusting enough, and perspicacious enough to come—having
  faith in my letters, having penetrated step by step into the
  depths of my heart—to come to our first meeting with the
  simplicity of a child: for that was what I dreamed to be the
  innocence of a man of genius. And now you have spoiled my
  treasure! But I forgive you; you live in Paris and, as you say,
  there is always a man within a poet.

  Because I tell you this will you think me some little girl who
  cultivates a garden-full of illusions? You, who are witty and
  wise, have you not guessed that when Mademoiselle d’Este received
  your pedantic lesson she said to herself: “No, dear poet, my first
  letter was not the pebble which a vagabond child flings about the
  highway to frighten the owner of the adjacent fruit-trees, but a
  net carefully and prudently thrown by a fisherman seated on a rock
  above the sea, hoping and expecting a miraculous draught.”

  All that you say so beautifully about the family has my approval.
  The man who is able to please me, and of whom I believe myself
  worthy, will have my heart and my life,—with the consent of my
  parents, for I will neither grieve them, nor take them unawares:
  happily, I am certain of reigning over them; and, besides, they
  are wholly without prejudice. Indeed, in every way, I feel myself
  protected against any delusions in my dream. I have built the
  fortress with my own hands, and I have let it be fortified by the
  boundless devotion of those who watch over me as if I were a
  treasure,—not that I am unable to defend myself in the open, if
  need be; for, let me say, circumstances have furnished me with
  armor of proof on which is engraved the word “Disdain.” I have the
  deepest horror of all that is calculating,—of all that is not
  pure, disinterested, and wholly noble. I worship the beautiful,
  the ideal, without being romantic; though I HAVE been, in my heart
  of hearts, in my dreams. But I recognize the truth of the various
  things, just even to vulgarity, which you have written me about
  Society and social life.

  For the time being we are, and we can only be, two friends. Why
  seek an unseen friend? you ask. Your person may be unknown to me,
  but your mind, your heart I know; they please me, and I feel an
  infinitude of thoughts within my soul which need a man of genius
  for their confidant. I do not wish the poem of my heart to be
  wasted; I would have it known to you as it is to God. What a
  precious thing is a true comrade, one to whom we can tell all! You
  will surely not reject the unpublished leaflets of a young girl’s
  thoughts when they fly to you like the pretty insects fluttering
  to the sun? I am sure you have never before met with this good
  fortune of the soul,—the honest confidences of an honest girl.
  Listen to her prattle; accept the music that she sings to you in
  her own heart. Later, if our souls are sisters, if our characters
  warrant the attempt, a white-haired old serving-man shall await
  you by the wayside and lead you to the cottage, the villa, the
  castle, the palace—I don’t know yet what sort of bower it will
  be, nor what its color, nor whether this conclusion will ever be
  possible; but you will admit, will you not? that it is poetic, and
  that Mademoiselle d’Este has a complying disposition. Has she not
  left you free? Has she gone with jealous feet to watch you in the
  salons of Paris? Has she imposed upon you the labors of some high
  emprise, such as paladins sought voluntarily in the olden time?
  No, she asks a perfectly spiritual and mystic alliance. Come to me
  when you are unhappy, wounded, weary. Tell me all, hide nothing; I
  have balms for all your ills. I am twenty years of age, dear
  friend, but I have the sense of fifty, and unfortunately I have
  known through the experience of another all the horrors and the
  delights of love. I know what baseness the human heart can
  contain, what infamy; yet I myself am an honest girl. No, I have
  no illusions; but I have something better, something real,—I have
  beliefs and a religion. See! I open the ball of our confidences.

  Whoever I marry—provided I choose him for myself—may sleep in
  peace or go to the East Indies sure that he will find me on his
  return working at the tapestry which I began before he left me;
  and in every stitch he shall read a verse of the poem of which he
  has been the hero. Yes, I have resolved within my heart never to
  follow my husband where he does not wish me to go. I will be the
  divinity of his hearth. That is my religion of humanity. But why
  should I not test and choose the man to whom I am to be like the
  life to the body? Is a man ever impeded by life? What can that
  woman be who thwarts the man she loves?—an illness, a disease,
  not life. By life, I mean that joyous health which makes each hour
  a pleasure.

  But to return to your letter, which will always be precious to me.
  Yes, jesting apart, it contains that which I desired, an
  expression of prosaic sentiments which are as necessary to family
  life as air to the lungs; and without which no happiness is
  possible. To act as an honest man, to think as a poet, to love as
  women love, that is what I longed for in my friend, and it is now
  no longer a chimera.

  Adieu, my friend. I am poor at this moment. That is one of the
  reasons why I cling to my concealment, my mask, my impregnable
  fortress. I have read your last verses in the “Revue,”—ah! with
  what delight, now that I am initiated in the austere loftiness of
  your secret soul.

  Will it make you unhappy to know that a young girl prays for you;
  that you are her solitary thought,—without a rival except in her
  father and mother? Can there be any reason why you should reject
  these pages full of you, written for you, seen by no eye but
  yours? Send me their counterpart. I am so little of a woman yet
  that your confidences—provided they are full and true—will
  suffice for the happiness of your

  Mademoiselle,—Is it quite loyal in you to enthrone yourself in
  the heart of a poor poet with a latent intention of abandoning him
  if he is not exactly what you wish, leaving him to endless
  regrets,—showing him for a moment an image of perfection, were it
  only assumed, and at any rate giving him a foretaste of happiness?
  I was very short-sighted in soliciting this letter, in which you
  have begun to unfold the elegant fabric of your thoughts. A man
  can easily become enamored with a mysterious unknown who combines
  such fearlessness with such originality, so much imagination with
  so much feeling. Who would not wish to know you after reading your
  first confidence? It requires a strong effort on my part to retain
  my senses in thinking of you, for you combine all that can trouble
  the head or the heart of man. I therefore make the most of the
  little self-possession you have left me to offer you my humble
  remonstrances.

  Do you really believe, mademoiselle, that letters, more or less
  true in relation to the life of the writers, more or less
  insincere,—for those which we write to each other are the
  expressions of the moment at which we pen them, and not of the
  general tenor of our lives,—do you believe, I say, that beautiful
  as they may be, they can at all replace the representation that we
  could make of ourselves to each other by the revelations of daily
  intercourse? Man is dual. There is a life invisible, that of the
  heart, to which letters may suffice; and there is a life material,
  to which more importance is, alas, attached than you are aware of
  at your age. These two existences must, however, be made to
  harmonize in the ideal which you cherish; and this, I may remark
  in passing, is very rare.

  The pure, spontaneous, disinterested homage of a solitary soul
  which is both educated and chaste, is one of those celestial
  flowers whose color and fragrance console for every grief, for
  every wound, for every betrayal which makes up the life of a
  literary man; and I thank you with an impulse equal to your own.
  But after this poetical exchange of my griefs for the pearls of
  your charity, what next? what do you expect? I have neither the
  genius nor the splendid position of Lord Byron; above all, I have
  not the halo of his fictitious damnation and his false social
  woes. But what could you have hoped from him in like
  circumstances? His friendship? Well, he who ought to have felt
  only pride was eaten up by vanity of every kind,—sickly,
  irritable vanity which discouraged friendship. I, a thousand-fold
  more insignificant than he, may I not have discordances of
  character, and make friendship a burden heavy indeed to bear? In
  exchange for your reveries, what will you gain? The
  dissatisfaction of a life which will not be wholly yours. The
  compact is madness. Let me tell you why. In the first place, your
  projected poem is a plagiarism. A young German girl, who was not,
  like you, semi-German, but altogether so, adored Goethe with the
  rash intoxication of girlhood. She made him her friend, her
  religion, her god, knowing at the same time that he was married.
  Madame Goethe, a worthy German woman, lent herself to this worship
  with a sly good-nature which did not cure Bettina. But what was
  the end of it all? The young ecstatic married a man who was
  younger and handsomer than Goethe. Now, between ourselves, let us
  admit that a young girl who should make herself the handmaid of a
  man of genius, his equal through comprehension, and should piously
  worship him till death, like one of those divine figures sketched
  by the masters on the shutters of their mystic shrines, and who,
  when Germany lost him, should have retired to some solitude away
  from men, like the friend of Lord Bolingbroke,—let us admit, I
  say, that the young girl would have lived forever, inlaid in the
  glory of the poet as Mary Magdalene in the cross and triumph of
  our Lord. If that is sublime, what say you to the reverse of the
  picture? As I am neither Goethe nor Lord Byron, the colossi of
  poetry and egotism, but simply the author of a few esteemed
  verses, I cannot expect the honors of a cult. Neither am I
  disposed to be a martyr. I have ambition, and I have a heart; I am
  still young and I have my career to make. See me for what I am.
  The bounty of the king and the protection of his ministers give me
  sufficient means of living. I have the outward bearing of a very
  ordinary man. I go to the soirees in Paris like any other
  empty-headed fop; and if I drive, the wheels of my carriage do not
  roll on the solid ground, absolutely indispensable in these days,
  of property invested in the funds. But if I am not rich, neither do
  I have the reliefs and consolations of life in a garret, the toil
  uncomprehended, the fame in penury, which belong to men who are
  worth far more than I,—D’Arthez, for instance.

  Ah! what prosaic conclusions will your young enthusiasm find to
  these enchanting visions. Let us stop here. If I have had the
  happiness of seeming to you a terrestrial paragon, you have been
  to me a thing of light and a beacon, like those stars that shine
  for  a moment and disappear. May nothing ever tarnish this episode
  of our lives. Were we to continue it I might love you; I might
  conceive one of those mad passions which rend all obstacles, which
  light fires in the heart whose violence is greater than their
  duration. And suppose I succeeded in pleasing you? we should end
  our tale in the common vulgar way,—marriage, a household,
  children, Belise and Henriette Chrysale together!—could it be?
  Therefore, adieu.

  To Monsieur de Canalis:

  My Friend,—Your letter gives me as much pain as pleasure. But
  perhaps some day we shall find nothing but pleasure in writing to
  each other. Understand me thoroughly. The soul speaks to God and
  asks him for many things; he is mute. I seek to obtain in you the
  answers that God does not make to me. Cannot the friendship of
  Mademoiselle de Gournay and Montaigne be revived in us? Do you not
  remember the household of Sismonde de Sismondi in Geneva? The most
  lovely home ever known, as I have been told; something like that
  of the Marquis de Pescaire and his wife,—happy to old age. Ah!
  friend, is it impossible that two hearts, two harps, should exist
  as in a symphony, answering each other from a distance, vibrating
  with delicious melody in unison? Man alone of all creation is in
  himself the harp, the musician, and the listener. Do you think to
  find me uneasy and jealous like ordinary women? I know that you go
  into the world and meet the handsomest and the wittiest women in
  Paris. May I not suppose that some one of those mermaids has
  deigned to clasp you in her cold and scaly arms, and that she has
  inspired the answer whose prosaic opinions sadden me? There is
  something in life more beautiful than the garlands of Parisian
  coquetry; there grows a flower far up those Alpine peaks called
  men of genius, the glory of humanity, which they fertilize with
  the dews their lofty heads draw from the skies. I seek to
  cultivate that flower and make it bloom; for its wild yet gentle
  fragrance can never fail,—it is eternal.

  Do me the honor to believe that there is nothing low or
  commonplace in me. Were I Bettina, for I know to whom you allude,
  I should never have become Madame von Arnim; and had I been one of
  Lord Byron’s many loves, I should be at this moment in a cloister.
  You have touched me to the quick. You do not know me, but you
  shall know me. I feel within me something that is sublime, of
  which I dare speak without vanity. God has put into my soul the
  roots of that Alpine flower born on the summits of which I speak,
  and I cannot plant it in an earthen pot upon my window-sill and
  see it die. No, that glorious flower-cup, single in its beauty,
  intoxicating in its fragrance, shall not be dragged through the
  vulgarities of life! it is yours—yours, before any eye has
  blighted it, yours forever! Yes, my poet, to you belong my
  thoughts,—all, those that are secret, those that are gayest; my
  heart is yours without reserve and with its infinite affection. If
  you should personally not please me, I shall never marry. I can
  live in the life of the heart, I can exist on your mind, your
  sentiments; they please me, and I will always be what I am, your
  friend. Yours is a noble moral nature; I have recognized it, I
  have appreciated it, and that suffices me. In that is all my
  future. Do not laugh at a young and pretty handmaiden who shrinks
  not from the thought of being some day the old companion of a
  poet,—a sort of mother perhaps, or a housekeeper; the guide of
  his judgment and a source of his wealth. This handmaiden—so
  devoted, so precious to the lives of such as you—is Friendship,
  pure, disinterested friendship, to whom you will tell all, who
  listens and sometimes shakes her head; who knits by the light of
  the lamp and waits to be present when the poet returns home soaked
  with rain, or vexed in mind. Such shall be my destiny if I do not
  find that of a happy wife attached forever to her husband; I smile
  alike at the thought of either fate. Do you believe France will be
  any the worse if Mademoiselle d’Este does not give it two or three
  sons, and never becomes a Madame Vilquin-something-or-other? As
  for me, I shall never be an old maid. I shall make myself a
  mother, by taking care of others and by my secret co-operation in
  the existence of a great man, to whom also I shall carry all my
  thoughts and all my earthly efforts.

  I have the deepest horror of commonplaceness. If I am free, if I
  am rich (and I know that I am young and pretty), I will never
  belong to any ninny just because he is the son of a peer of
  France, nor to a merchant who could ruin himself and me in a day,
  nor to a handsome creature who would be a sort of woman in the
  household, nor to a man of any kind who would make me blush twenty
  times a day for being his. Make yourself easy on that point. My
  father adores my wishes; he will never oppose them. If I please my
  poet, and he pleases me, the glorious structure of our love shall
  be built so high as to be inaccessible to any kind of misfortune.
  I am an eaglet; and you will see it in my eyes.

  I shall not repeat what I have already said, but I will put its
  substance in the least possible number of words, and confess to
  you that I should be the happiest of women if I were imprisoned by
  love as I am now imprisoned by the wish and will of a father. Ah!
  my friend, may we bring to a real end the romance that has come to
  us through the first exercise of my will: listen to its
  argument:—

  A young girl with a lively imagination, locked up in a tower, is
  weary with longing to run loose in the park where her eyes only
  are allowed to rove. She invents a way to loosen her bars; she
  jumps from the casement; she scales the park wall; she frolics
  along the neighbor’s sward—it is the Everlasting comedy. Well,
  that young girl is my soul, the neighbor’s park is your genius. Is
  it not all very natural? Was there ever a neighbor that did not
  complain that unknown feet broke down his trellises? I leave it to
  my poet to answer.

  But does the lofty reasoner after the fashion of Moliere want
  still better reasons? Well, here they are. My dear Geronte,
  marriages are usually made in defiance of common-sense. Parents
  make inquiries about a young man. If the Leander—who is supplied
  by some friend, or caught in a ball-room—is not a thief, and has
  no visible rent in his reputation, if he has the necessary
  fortune, if he comes from a college or a law-school and so fulfils
  the popular ideas of education, and if he wears his clothes with a
  gentlemanly air, he is allowed to meet the young lady, whose
  mother has ordered her to guard her tongue, to let no sign of her
  heart or soul appear on her face, which must wear the smile of a
  danseuse finishing a pirouette. These commands are coupled with
  instructions as to the danger of revealing her real character, and
  the additional advice of not seeming alarmingly well educated. If
  the settlements have all been agreed upon, the parents are
  good-natured enough to let the pair see each other for a few
  moments; they are allowed to talk or walk together, but always
  without the slightest freedom, and knowing that they are bound by
  rigid rules. The man is as much dressed up in soul as he is in body,
  and so is the young girl. This pitiable comedy, mixed with bouquets,
  jewels, and theatre-parties is called “paying your addresses.” It
  revolts me: I desire that actual marriage shall be the result of a
  previous and long marriage of souls. A young girl, a woman, has
  throughout her life only this one moment when reflection, second
  sight, and experience are necessary to her. She plays her liberty,
  her happiness, and she is not allowed to throw the dice; she risks
  her all, and is forced to be a mere spectator. I have the right,
  the will, the power to make my own unhappiness, and I use them, as
  did my mother, who, won by beauty and led by instinct, married the
  most generous, the most liberal, the most loving of men. I know
  that you are free, a poet, and noble-looking. Be sure that I
  should not have chosen one of your brothers in Apollo who was
  already married. If my mother was won by beauty, which is perhaps
  the spirit of form, why should I not be attracted by the spirit
  and the form united? Shall I not know you better by studying you
  in this correspondence than I could through the vulgar experience
  of “receiving your addresses”? This is the question, as Hamlet
  says.

  But my proceedings, dear Chrysale, have at least the merit of not
  binding us personally. I know that love has its illusions, and
  every illusion its to-morrow. That is why there are so many
  partings among lovers vowed to each other for life. The proof of
  love lies in two things,—suffering and happiness. When, after
  passing through these double trials of life two beings have shown
  each other their defects as well as their good qualities, when
  they have really observed each other’s character, then they may go
  to their grave hand in hand. My dear Argante, who told you that
  our little drama thus begun was to have no future? In any case
  shall we not have enjoyed the pleasures of our correspondence?

  I await your orders, monseigneur, and I am with all my heart,

  Your handmaiden,

  O. d’Este M.

  To Mademoiselle O. d’Este M.,—You are a witch, a spirit, and I
  love you! Is that what you desire of me, most original of girls?
  Perhaps you are only seeking to amuse your provincial leisure with
  the follies which are you able to make a poet commit. If so, you
  have done a bad deed. Your two letters have enough of the spirit
  of mischief in them to force this doubt into the mind of a
  Parisian. But I am no longer master of myself; my life, my future
  depend on the answer you will make me. Tell me if the certainty of
  an unbounded affection, oblivious of all social conventions, will
  touch you,—if you will suffer me to seek you. There is anxiety
  enough and uncertainty enough in the question as to whether I can
  personally please you. If your reply is favorable I change my
  life, I bid adieu to all the irksome pleasures which we have the
  folly to call happiness. Happiness, my dear and beautiful unknown,
  is what you dream it to be,—a fusion of feelings, a perfect
  accordance of souls, the imprint of a noble ideal (such as God
  does permit us to form in this low world) upon the trivial round
  of daily life whose habits we must needs obey, a constancy of
  heart more precious far than what we call fidelity. Can we say
  that we make sacrifices when the end in view is our eternal good,
  the dream of poets, the dream of maidens, the poem which, at the
  entrance of life when thought essays its wings, each noble
  intellect has pondered and caressed only to see it shivered to
  fragments on some stone of stumbling as hard as it is vulgar?—for
  to the great majority of men, the foot of reality steps instantly
  on that mysterious egg so seldom hatched.

  I cannot speak to you any more of myself; not of my past life, nor
  of my character, nor of an affection almost maternal on one side,
  filial on mine, which you have already seriously changed—an
  effect upon my life which must explain my use of the word
  “sacrifice.” You have already rendered me forgetful, if not
  ungrateful; does that satisfy you? Oh, speak! Say to me one word,
  and I will love you till my eyes close in death, as the Marquis de
  Pescaire loved his wife, as Romeo loved Juliet, and faithfully.
  Our life will be, for me at least, that “felicity untroubled”
   which Dante made the very element of his Paradiso,—a poem far
  superior to his Inferno. Strange, it is not myself that I doubt in
  the long reverie through which, like you, I follow the windings of
  a dreamed existence; it is you. Yes, dear, I feel within me the
  power to love, and to love endlessly,—to march to the grave with
  gentle slowness and a smiling eye, with my beloved on my arm, and
  with never a cloud upon the sunshine of our souls. Yes, I dare to
  face our mutual old age, to see ourselves with whitening heads,
  like the venerable historian of Italy, inspired always with the
  same affection but transformed in soul by our life’s seasons. Hear
  me, I can no longer be your friend only. Though Chrysale, Geronte,
  and Argante re-live, you say, in me, I am not yet old enough to
  drink from the cup held to my lips by the sweet hands of a veiled
  woman without a passionate desire to tear off the domino and the
  mask and see the face. Either write me no more, or give me hope.
  Let me see you, or let me go. Must I bid you adieu? Will you
  permit me to sign myself,

  Your Friend?

  To Monsieur de Canalis,—What flattery! with what rapidity is the
  grave Anselme transformed into a handsome Leander! To what must I
  attribute such a change? to this black which I put upon this
  white? to these ideas which are to the flowers of my soul what a
  rose drawn in charcoal is to the roses in the garden? Or is it to
  a recollection of the young girl whom you took for me, and who is
  personally as like me as a waiting-woman is like her mistress?
  Have we changed roles? Have I the sense? have you the fancy? But a
  truce with jesting.

  Your letter has made me know the elating pleasures of the soul;
  the first that I have known outside of my family affections. What,
  says a poet, are the ties of blood which are so strong in ordinary
  minds, compared to those divinely forged within us by mysterious
  sympathies? Let me thank you—no, we must not thank each other for
  such things—but God bless you for the happiness you have given
  me; be happy in the joy you have shed into my soul. You explain to
  me some of the apparent injustices in social life. There is
  something, I know not what, so dazzling, so virile in glory, that
  it belongs only to man; God forbids us women to wear its halo, but
  he makes love our portion, giving us the tenderness which soothes
  the brow scorched by his lightnings. I have felt my mission, and
  you have now confirmed it.

  Sometimes, my friend, I rise in the morning in a state of
  inexpressible sweetness; a sort of peace, tender and divine, gives
  me an idea of heaven. My first thought is then like a benediction.
  I call these mornings my little German wakings, in opposition to
  my Southern sunsets, full of heroic deeds, battles, Roman fetes
  and ardent poems. Well, after reading your letter, so full of
  feverish impatience, I felt in my heart all the freshness of my
  celestial wakings, when I love the air about me and all nature,
  and fancy that I am destined to die for one I love. One of your
  poems, “The Maiden’s Song,” paints these delicious moments, when
  gaiety is tender, when aspiration is a need; it is one of my
  favorites. Do you want me to put all my flatteries into one?—well
  then, I think you worthy to be me!

  Your letter, though short, enables me to read within you. Yes, I
  have guessed your tumultuous struggles, your piqued curiosity,
  your projects; but I do not yet know you well enough to satisfy
  your wishes. Hear me, dear; the mystery in which I am shrouded
  allows me to use that word, which lets you see to the bottom of my
  heart. Hear me: if we once meet, adieu to our mutual
  comprehension! Will you make a compact with me? Was the first
  disadvantageous to you? But remember it won you my esteem, and it
  is a great deal, my friend, to gain an admiration lined throughout
  with esteem. Here is the compact: write me your life in a few
  words; then tell me what you do in Paris, day by day, with no
  reservations, and as if you were talking to some old friend. Well,
  having done that, I will take a step myself—I will see you, I
  promise you that. And it is a great deal.

  This, dear, is no intrigue, no adventure; no gallantry, as you men
  say, can come of it, I warn you frankly. It involves my life, and
  more than that,—something that causes me remorse for the many
  thoughts that fly to you in flocks—it involves my father’s and my
  mother’s life. I adore them, and my choice must please them; they
  must find a son in you.

  Tell me, to what extent can the superb spirits of your kind, to
  whom God has given the wings of his angels, without always adding
  their amiability,—how far can they bend under a family yoke, and
  put up with its little miseries? That is a text I have meditated
  upon. Ah! though I said to my heart before I came to you, Forward!
  Onward! it did not tremble and palpitate any the less on the way;
  and I did not conceal from myself the stoniness of the path nor
  the Alpine difficulties I had to encounter. I thought of all in my
  long, long meditations. Do I not know that eminent men like you
  have known the love they have inspired quite as well as that which
  they themselves have felt; that they have had many romances in
  their lives,—you particularly, who send forth those airy visions
  of your soul that women rush to buy? Yet still I cried to myself,
  “Onward!” because I have studied, more than you give me credit
  for, the geography of the great summits of humanity, which you
  tell me are so cold. Did you not say that Goethe and Byron were
  the colossi of egoism and poetry? Ah, my friend, there you shared
  a mistake into which superficial minds are apt to fall; but in you
  perhaps it came from generosity, false modesty, or the desire to
  escape from me. Vulgar minds may mistake the effect of toil for
  the development of personal character, but you must not. Neither
  Lord Byron, nor Goethe, nor Walter Scott, nor Cuvier, nor any
  inventor, belongs to himself, he is the slave of his idea. And
  this mysterious power is more jealous than a woman; it sucks their
  blood, it makes them live, it makes them die for its sake. The
  visible developments of their hidden existence do seem, in their
  results, like egotism; but who shall dare to say that the man who
  has abnegated self to give pleasure, instruction, or grandeur to
  his epoch, is an egoist? Is a mother selfish when she immolates
  all things to her child? Well, the detractors of genius do not
  perceive its fecund maternity, that is all. The life of a poet is
  so perpetual a sacrifice that he needs a gigantic organization to
  bear even the ordinary pleasures of life. Therefore, into what
  sorrows may he not fall when, like Moliere, he wishes to live the
  life of feeling in its most poignant crises; to me, remembering
  his personal life, Moliere’s comedy is horrible.

  The generosity of genius seems to me half divine; and I place you
  in this noble family of alleged egoists. Ah! if I had found
  self-interest, ambition, a seared nature where I now can see my
  best loved flowers of the soul, you know not what long anguish I
  should have had to bear. I met with disappointment before I was
  sixteen. What would have become of me had I learned at twenty that
  fame is a lie, that he whose books express the feelings hidden in
  my heart was incapable of feeling them himself? Oh! my friend, do
  you know what would have become of me? Shall I take you into the
  recesses of my soul? I should have gone to my father and said,
  “Bring me the son-in-law whom you desire; my will abdicates,—marry
  me to whom you please.” And the man might have been a notary,
  banker, miser, fool, dullard, wearisome as a rainy day, common as
  the usher of a school, a manufacturer, or some brave soldier without
  two ideas,—he would have had a resigned and attentive servant in
  me. But what an awful suicide! never could my soul have expanded
  in the life-giving rays of a beloved sun. No murmur should have
  revealed to my father, or my mother, or my children the suicide of
  the creature who at this instant is shaking her fetters, casting
  lightnings from her eyes, and flying towards you with eager wing.
  See, she is there, at the angle of your desk, like Polyhymnia,
  breathing the air of your presence, and glancing about her with a
  curious eye. Sometimes in the fields where my husband would have
  taken me to walk, I should have wept, apart and secretly, at sight
  of a glorious morning; and in my heart, or hidden in a
  bureau-drawer, I might have kept some treasure, the comfort of poor
  girls ill-used by love, sad, poetic souls,—but ah! I have you, I
  believe in you, my friend. That belief straightens all my thoughts
  and fancies, even the most fantastic, and sometimes—see how far
  my frankness leads me—I wish I were in the middle of the book we
  are just beginning; such persistency do I feel in my sentiments,
  such strength in my heart to love, such constancy sustained by
  reason, such heroism for the duties for which I was created,—if
  indeed love can ever be transmuted into duty.

  If you were able to follow me to the exquisite retreat where I
  fancy ourselves happy, if you knew my plans and projects, the
  dreadful word “folly!” might escape you, and I should be cruelly
  punished for sending poetry to a poet. Yes, I wish to be a spring
  of waters inexhaustible as a fertile land for the twenty years
  that nature allows me to shine. I want to drive away satiety by
  charm. I mean to be courageous for my friend as most women are for
  the world. I wish to vary happiness. I wish to put intelligence
  into tenderness, and to give piquancy to fidelity. I am filled
  with ambition to kill the rivals of the past, to conjure away all
  outside griefs by a wife’s gentleness, by her proud abnegation, to
  take a lifelong care of the nest,—such as birds can only take for
  a few weeks.

  Tell me, do you now think me to blame for my first letter? The
  mysterious wind of will drove me to you, as the tempest brings the
  little rose-tree to the pollard window. In your letter, which I
  hold here upon my heart, you cried out, like your ancestor when he
  departed for the Crusades, “God wills it.”

  Ah! but you will cry out, “What a chatterbox!” All the people
  round me say, on the contrary, “Mademoiselle is very taciturn.”