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 *******, 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"
