her for a woman until I saw you.  You have proved to me that Camille is a man; she swims, hunts, smokes, drinks, rides on horseback, writes and analyzes hearts and books; she has no weaknesses; she marches on in all her strength; her motions even have no resemblance to your graceful movements, to your step, airy as the flight of a bird.  Neither has she your voice of love, your tender eyes, your gracious manner; she is Camille Maupin; there is nothing of the woman about her, whereas in you are all the things of womanhood that I love.  It has seemed to me, from the first moment when I saw you, that you were mine.

  You will laugh at that fancy, but it has grown and is growing.  It
  seems to me unnatural, anomalous that we should be apart.  You are
  my soul, my life; I cannot live where you are not!

Let me love you!  Let us fly! let us go into some country where you know no one, where only God and I can reach your heart!  My mother, who loves you, might some day follow us.  Ireland is full of castles; my mother’s family will lend us one.  Ah, Beatrix, let us go!  A boat, a few sailors, and we are there, before any one can know we have fled this world you fear so much.

You have never been loved.  I feel it as I re-read your letter, in which I fancy I can see that if the reasons you bring forward did not exist, you would let yourself be loved by me.  Beatrix, a sacred love wipes out the past.  Yes, I love you so truly that I could wish you doubly shamed if so my love might prove itself by holding you a saint!

You call my love an insult.  Oh, Beatrix, you do not think it so!  The love of noble youth—­and you have called me that—­would honor a queen.  Therefore, to-morrow let us walk as lovers, hand in hand, among the rocks and beside the sea; your step upon the sands of my old Brittany will bless them anew to me!  Give me this day of happiness; and that passing alms, unremembered, alas! by you, will be eternal riches to your

Calyste.

The baroness let fall the letter, without reading all of it.  She knelt upon a chair, and made a mental prayer to God to save her Calyste’s reason, to put his madness, his error far away from him; to lead him from the path in which she now beheld him.

“What are you doing, mother?” said Calyste, entering the room.

“I am praying to God for you,” she answered, simply, turning her tearful eyes upon him.  “I have committed the sin of reading that letter.  My Calyste is mad!”

“A sweet madness!” said the young man, kissing her.

“I wish I could see that woman,” she sighed.

“Mamma,” said Calyste, “we shall take a boat to-morrow and cross to Croisic.  If you are on the jetty you can see her.”

So saying, he sealed his letter and departed for Les Touches.

That which, above all, terrified the baroness was to see a sentiment attaining, by the force of its own instinct, to the clear-sightedness of practised experience.  Calyste’s letter to Beatrix was such as the Chevalier du Halga, with his knowledge of the world, might have dictated.