IRENE DE CHATEAUDUN _to_ MME. LA VICOMTESSE DE BRAIMES,
Hotel de la Prefecture, Grenoble (Isère).
PARIS, July 27th 18--.
Valentine, I am very uneasy. Why have I not heard from you for a month?
Are you in any trouble? Is one of your dear children ill? Are you no
longer at Grenoble? Have you taken your trip without me? The last would
be the most acceptable reason for your silence. You have not received my
letters, and ignorance of my sorrows accounts for your not writing to
console me. Yet never have I been in greater need of the offices of
friendship. The resolution I have just taken fills me with alarm. I
acted against my judgment, but I could not do otherwise. I was
influenced by an agonized mother, whose hallowed grief persuaded me
against my will to espouse her interests. Why have I not a friend here
to interpose in my behalf and save me from myself? But, after all, does
it make any difference what becomes of me? Hope is dead within me. I no
longer dream of happiness. At last the sad mystery is explained.... M.
de Villiers is not free; he is engaged to his cousin.... Oh, he does not
love her, I am sure, but he is a slave to his plighted troth, and of
course she loves him and will not release him ... Can he, for a
stranger, sacrifice family ties and a love dating from his childhood?
Ah! if he really loved me, he would have had the courage to make this
sacrifice; but he only felt a tender sympathy for me, lively enough to
fill him with everlasting regret, not strong enough to inspire him with
a painful resolution. Thus two beings created for each other meet for a
moment, recognise one another, and then, unwillingly, separate, carrying
in their different paths of life a burden of eternal regrets! And they
languish apart in their separate spheres, unhappy and attached to
nothing but the memory of the past--made wretched for life by the
accidents of a day!
They are as the passengers of different ships, meeting for an hour in
the same port, who hastily exchange a few words of sympathy, then pass
away to other latitudes, under other skies--some to the North, others to
the South, to the land of ice--to the cradle of the sun--far, far away
from each other, to die. Is it then true that I shall never see him
again? Oh, my God! how I loved him! I can never forgive him for not
accepting this love that I was ready to lavish upon him.
I will now tell you what I have resolved to do. If I waver a moment I
shall not have the courage to keep my promise. Madame de Meilhan is
coming after me; I could not, after causing her such sorrow, resist the
tears of this unhappy mother. She was in despair; her son had suddenly
left her, and in spite of the secrecy of his movements, she discovered
that he was at Havre and had taken passage there for America, on the
steamer Ontario. She hoped to reach Havre in time to see her son, and
she relied upon me to bring him home. I am distressed at causing her so
much uneasiness, but what can I say to console her? I will at best be
generous; Edgar's sorrow is like my own; as he suffers for me, I suffer
for another; I cannot see his anguish, so like my own, without profound
pity; this pity will doubtless inspire me with eloquence enough to
persuade him to remain in France and not break his mother's heart by
desertion. Besides, I have promised, and Madame de Meilhan relies upon
me. How beautiful is maternal love! It crushes the loftiest pride, it
overthrows with one cry the most ambitious plans; this haughty woman is
subjugated by grief; she calls me her daughter; she gladly consents to
this marriage which, a short time ago, she said would ruin her son's
prospects, and which she looked upon with horror; she weeps, she
supplicates. This morning she embraced me with every expression of
devotion and cried out: "Give me back my son! Oh, restore to me my
son!... You love him, ... he loves you, ... he is handsome, charming,
talented.... I shall never see him again if you let him go away; tell
him you love him; have you the cruelty to deprive me of my only son?"
What could I say? how could I make an idolizing mother understand that I
did not love her son?... If I had dared to say, "It is not he that I
love, it is another," ... she would have said: "It is false; there is
not a man on earth preferable to my son." She wept over the letter that
Edgar wrote me before leaving. Valentine, this letter was noble and
touching. I could not restrain my own tears when I read it. Finally, I
was forced to yield. I am to accompany Madame de Meilhan to Havre; I
hope we will reach there before the steamer leaves!... Edgar will not go
to America, ... and I!... Oh, why is he the one to love me thus?... She
has come for me! Adieu; write to me, my dear Valentine, ... I am so
miserable. If you were only here! What will become of me? Adieu!