Everybody admired me, but only one adored. He hung his head as I entered
with a white camellia, but turned pale as the flower when, later, I took
a red one from my mother's hand. To arrive with the two flowers might
possibly have been accidental; but this deliberate action was a reply.
My confession, therefore, is fuller than it need have been.
The opera was _Romeo and Juliet_. As you don't know the duet of the two
lovers, you can't understand the bliss of two neophytes in love, as they
listen to this divine outpouring of the heart.
On returning home I went to bed, but only to count the steps which
resounded on the sidewalk. My heart and head, darling, are all on fire
now. What is he doing? What is he thinking of? Has he a thought, a
single thought, that is not of me? Is he, in very truth, the devoted
slave he painted himself? How to be sure? Or, again, has it ever entered
his head that, if I accept him, I lay myself open to the shadow of a
reproach or am in any sense rewarding or thanking him? I am harrowed by
the hair-splitting casuistry of the heroines in _Cyrus_ and _Astraea_,
by all the subtle arguments of the court of love.
Has he any idea that, in affairs of love, a woman's most trifling
actions are but the issue of long brooding and inner conflicts, of
victories won only to be lost! What are his thoughts at this moment? How
can I give him my orders to write every evening the particulars of the
day just gone? He is my slave whom I ought to keep busy. I shall deluge
him with work!
Sunday Morning.
Only towards morning did I sleep a little. It is midday now. I have just
got Griffith to write the following letter:
"_To the Baron de Macumer_.
"Mademoiselle de Chaulieu begs me, Monsieur le Baron, to ask you
to return to her the copy of a letter written to her by a friend,
which is in her own handwriting, and which you carried away.--
Believe me, etc.,
"GRIFFITH."
My dear, Griffith has gone out; she has gone to the Rue Hillerin-Bertin;
she had handed in this little love-letter for my slave, who returned to
me in an envelope my sweet portrait, stained with tears. He has obeyed.
Oh! my sweet, it must have been dear to him! Another man would have
refused to send it in a letter full of flattery; but the Saracen has
fulfilled his promises. He has obeyed. It moves me to tears.