and more sacred, and that is my own good pleasure’?  Bernard, your love is full of contradictory desires.  Inconsistency, moreover, is the mark of all human loves.  Men imagine that a woman can have no separate existence of her own, and that she must always be wrapped up in them; and yet the only woman they love deeply is she whose character seems to raise her above the weakness and indolence of her sex.  You see how all the settlers in this country dispose of the beauty of their slaves, but they have no love for them, however beautiful they may be; and if by chance they become genuinely attached to one of them, their first care is to set her free.  Until then they do not think that they are dealing with a human being.  A spirit of independence, the conception of virtue, a love of duty, all these privileges of lofty souls are essential, therefore, in the woman who is to be one’s companion through life; and the more your mistress gives proof of strength and patience, the more you cherish her, in spite of what you may have to suffer.  You must learn, then, to distinguish love from desire; desire wishes to break through the very impediments by which it is attracted, and it dies amid the ruins of the virtue it has vanquished; love wishes to live, and in order to do that, it would fain see the object of its worship long defended by that wall of adamant whose strength and splendour mean true worth and true beauty.”

In this way would Arthur explain to me the mysterious springs of my passion, and throw the light of his wisdom upon the stormy abyss of my soul.  Sometimes he used to add: 

“If Heaven had granted me the woman I have now and then dreamed of, I think I should have succeeded in making a noble and generous passion of my love; but science has asked for too much of my time.  I have not had leisure to look for my ideal; and if perchance it has crossed my path, I have not been able either to study it or recognise it.  You have been fortunate, Bernard, but then, you do not sound the deeps of natural history; one man cannot have everything.”

As to my suspicions about Edmee’s marriage, he rejected them with contempt as morbid fancies.  To him, indeed, Edmee’s silence showed an admirable delicacy of feeling and conduct.

“A vain person,” he said, “would take care to let you know all the sacrifices she had made on your account, and would enumerate the titles and qualities of the suitors she had refused.  Edmee, however, has too noble a soul, too serious a mind, to enter into these futile details.  She looks upon your covenant as inviolable, and does not imitate those weak consciences which are always talking of their victories, and making a merit of doing that in which true strength finds no difficulty.  She is so faithful by nature that she never imagines that any one can suspect her of being otherwise.”

These talks poured healing balm on my wounds.  When at last France openly declared herself an ally of America, I received a piece of news from the abbe that entirely set my mind at ease on one point.  He wrote to me that I should probably meet an old friend again in the New World; the Count de la Marche had been given command of a regiment, and was setting out for the United States.