"From my bed, this Wednesday night.
"What! you scold me in sober truth! You write me a scrap of a letter--in
the coldest, gravest style. Yes--you were sad--I see you were. Do you
fancy that the lecture you gave me makes up for my grief at losing you?
Ah! if I had not recalled your eyes glowing with love, and all our
mutual endearments, I should have been angry with you. How strange that
your very recollection pleads your excuse! Whatever may be your fault,
you have but to show yourself to be forgiven. But do not presume, upon
this confession, to add to your faults. Alas! if ever you deserve a
punishment, its bitterness will all belong to me. Fortune befriended us
when last we met; but don't you find time pass too quickly when we are
together? I have always a thousand things to say to you; it is not,
perhaps, the shortness of the time--it is, that the more I say to you
the more I wish to say. In the same way, the more kisses I give you, the
more I wish to give; all the feelings you inspire are in extremes. How
you ought to love me if you wish your tenderness to equal mine! And
since it is always on the increase, how cruel that we can never give way
to the sentiments we feel, and express them to each other! What pleasure
we are deprived of, dear Misis! why are you not beside the couch where I
am now writing? Our silence alone would be more eloquent than all our
letters. The kisses I would give you would no longer be in dreams,
though my happiness would perhaps make me think it one. Adieu! the more
I think of it, the more I feel the misery of being separated from you.
It is near one o'clock. Are you in bed yet? Think of me!"
This secret correspondence lasted for three years; but, at last, a
letter was opened by a servant, and the secret was discovered by the
Sieur de la Motte, who passed for the Demoiselle de Surcourt's uncle,
and with whom she lived. The Sieur Lebrun had but to whisper marriage,
and all would have been arranged. Under other circumstances the word
would have been easy--but there was a bar between them: the Demoiselle
de Surcourt was of illegitimate birth. Love, however, laughed at the
obstruction. The Sieur Lebrun hurried to the house of De la Motte;
demanded the hand of the lady he loved; and the Demoiselle de Surcourt
became his wife. The marriage contract will prove his disinterestedness.
The portion he obtained was small; consisting but of eighteen hundred
francs a-year. The Sieur Lebrun, secretary of the domains of the Prince
de Conti, with two thousand livres a-year, might have looked higher--at
all events he might have bargained for a settlement in his favour; but,
so far from that, he made no claim upon her fortune, but settled all he
had upon her. Is this the man whom Madame Lebrun accuses of having
married her from interested motives?
Alas, sometimes, for the marriages which have been preceded by too
violent a love!--illusion gives place to sad reality. The boy and girl
love without having learned to know each other; and cease to love when
that knowledge comes! But the attachment of the Sieur and Madame Lebrun
experienced no revolution of the kind. Fourteen years passed away in
uninterrupted union. Though converted into a husband, the Sieur Lebrun
did not cease to be Misis; the wedded De Surcourt continued to be
"Fanny"--charming names--ingenious disguises--chosen by two lovers to
perpetuate the memory of the times of courtship!
More than three hundred letters, written by Madame Lebrun during that
time, were in the hands of her husband--irrefragable proofs of their
mutual affection; but she has found means to get away the greater part
of them; enough, however, remain to make his justification complete.
Never was a union more harmonious--a wife more petted and indulged. It
seemed that felicity, resting on such foundations, could never be
disturbed; but one single moment was sufficient to overturn the work of
seventeen years!
The Sieur and Madame Lebrun had been intimate for some years with a
certain Sieur Grimod, who held an appointment from the king, and lived
as if his office was of great value. The Sieur Lebrun is not astonished
that his wife was pleased with the acquaintance, for he prized it very
highly himself; but a time came when he thought it better for all
parties that it should cease. The Sieur Lebrun believes in his wife's
virtue as in his own existence. What! if he had _not_ that belief, would
he be here to reclaim her by course of law? But it is not enough for a
woman to have the reality of virtue--she must have the appearance also;
and every man has a right to be in that respect a Caesar. Already some
indiscretions of Madame Lebrun, which the openness and purity of her
mind could alone render excusable--her portrait drawn without her
husband's knowledge for the Sieur Grimod--a letter from that individual
to the lady, written in a style such as no one would use towards a lady
he respected--had begun to inspire the Sieur Lebrun with a certain
coolness. The whisperings at last, unjust as they were, no doubt, of a
malicious public--the advice of his friends--his own susceptibility,
made it imperative on him to come to a rupture, in which Madame Lebrun
should have been glad to join. And here is the letter he wrote to the
Sieur Grimod:--
_This 15th January 1774._
"There are a thousand circumstances, Sir, which every day make
it a man's duty no longer to see the persons who have
previously been most highly prized. I experience this myself in
declining an acquaintance with you, which in other respects I
greatly valued. You know better than any one else how much I
lose by this step. Madame Lebrun unites her regrets to mine,
and begs me to assure you, and also Madame Grimod, of her
affectionate thanks, ('de ses plus tendres remercimens.') I
have the honour to be, with perfect truth, and for the last
time," &c.