In this, my dear Calyste, are many motives which delicate and noble women keep to themselves, of which you men know nothing; nor could you understand them, even though you were all as like our sex as you yourself appear to be at this moment.

My child, you have a mother who has shown you what you ought to be in life.  She is pure and spotless; she fulfils her destiny nobly; what I have heard of her has filled my eyes with tears, and in the depths of my heart I envy her.  I, too, might have been what she is!  Calyste, that is the woman your wife should be, and such should be her life.  I will never send you back, in jest, as I have done, to that little Charlotte, who would weary you to death; but I do commend you to some divine young girl who is worthy of your love.

If I were yours, your life would be blighted.  You would have given me your whole existence, and I—­you see, I am frank—­I should have taken it; I should have gone with you, Heaven knows where, far from the world!  But I should have made you most unhappy; for I am jealous.  I see lions lurking in the path, and monsters in drops of water.  I am made wretched by trifles that most women put up with; inexorable thoughts—­from my heart, not yours—­would poison our existence and destroy my life.  If a man, after ten years’ happiness, were not as respectful and as delicate as he was to me at first, I should resent the change; it would abase me in my own eyes!  Such a lover could not believe in the Amadis and the Cyrus of my dreams.  To-day true love is but a dream, not a reality.  I see in yours only the joy of a desire the end of which is, as yet, unperceived by you.

For myself, I am not forty years old; I have not bent my pride beneath the yoke of experience,—­in short, I am a woman too young to be anything but odious.  I will not answer for my temper; my grace and charm are all external.  Perhaps I have not yet suffered enough to have the indulgent manners and the absolute tenderness which come to us from cruel disappointments.  Happiness has its insolence, and I, I fear, am insolent.  Camille will be always your devoted slave; I should be an unreasonable tyrant.  Besides, Camille was brought to you by your guardian angel, at the turning point of your life, to show you the career you ought to follow,—­a career in which you cannot fail.

I know Felicite! her tenderness is inexhaustible; she may ignore the graces of our sex, but she possesses that fruitful strength, that genius for constancy, that noble intrepidity which makes us willing to accept the rest.  She will marry you to some young girl, no matter what she suffers.  She will find you a free Beatrix—­if it is a Beatrix indeed who answers to your desires in a wife, and to your dreams; she will smooth all the difficulties in your way.  The sale of a single acre of her ground in Paris would free your property in Brittany; she will make you her heir; are you not already