Madame de Mortsauf to the Vicomte Felix de Vandenesse:
Felix, friend, loved too well, I must now lay bare my heart to
you,--not so much to prove my love as to show you the weight of
obligation you have incurred by the depth and gravity of the
wounds you have inflicted on it. At this moment, when I sink
exhausted by the toils of life, worn out by the shocks of its
battle, the woman within me is, mercifully, dead; the mother alone
survives. Dear, you are now to see how it was that you were the
original cause of all my sufferings. Later, I willingly received
your blows; to-day I am dying of the final wound your hand has
given,--but there is joy, excessive joy in feeling myself
destroyed by him I love.
....
My
beloved, you are now to know all, for I would not leave you in
ignorance of any thought of mine. What I confide to God in my last
hour you, too, must know,--you, king of my heart as He is King of
Heaven.
Until the ball given to the Duc d'Angouleme (the only ball at
which I was ever present), marriage had left me in that ignorance
which gives to the soul of a young girl the beauty of the angels.
True, I was a mother, but love had never surrounded me with its
permitted pleasures. How did this happen? I do not know; neither
do I know by what law everything within me changed in a moment.
You remember your kisses? they have mastered my life, they have
furrowed my soul; the ardor of your blood awoke the ardor of mine;
your youth entered my youth, your desires my soul. When I rose and
left you proudly I was filled with an emotion for which I know no
name in any language--for children have not yet found a word to
express the marriage of their eyes with light, nor the kiss of
life laid upon their lips. Yes, it was sound coming in the echo,
light flashing through the darkness, motion shaking the universe;
at least, it was rapid like all these things, but far more
beautiful, for it was the birth of the soul! I comprehended then
that something, I knew not what, existed for me in the world,--a
force nobler than thought; for it was all thoughts, all forces, it
was the future itself in a shared emotion. I felt I was but half a
mother. Falling thus upon my heart this thunderbolt awoke desires
which slumbered there without my knowledge; suddenly I divined all
that my aunt had meant when she kissed my forehead, murmuring,
....
Farewell, dear child of my heart; this is the farewell of a mind
absolutely sane, still full of life; the farewell of a spirit on
which thou hast shed too many and too great joys to suffer thee to
feel remorse for the catastrophe they have caused. I use that word
"catastrophe" thinking of you and how you love me; as for me, I
reach the haven of my rest, sacrificed to duty and not without
regret--ah! I tremble at that thought. God knows better than I
whether I have fulfilled his holy laws in accordance with their
spirit. Often, no doubt, I have tottered, but I have not fallen;
the most potent cause of my wrong-doing lay in the grandeur of the
seductions that encompassed me. The Lord will behold me trembling
when I enter His presence as though I had succumbed. Farewell
again, a long farewell like that I gave last night to our dear
valley, where I soon shall rest and where you will often--will you
not?--return.
Henriette.
