Louise, can it be that, with all your knowledge of the deep-seated
mischief wrought by the indulgence of passion, even within the heart of
marriage, you are planning a life of wedded solitude? Having sacrificed
your first husband in the course of a fashionable career, would you now
fly to the desert to consume a second? What stores of misery you are
laying up for yourself!
But I see from the way you have set about it that there is no going
back. The man who has overcome your aversion to a second marriage must
indeed possess some magic of mind and heart; and you can only be left
to your illusions. But have you forgotten your former criticism on young
men? Not one, you would say, but has visited haunts of shame, and
has besmirched his purity with the filth of the streets. Where is the
change, pray--in them or in you?
You are a lucky woman to be able to believe in happiness. I have not the
courage to blame you for it, though the instinct of affection urges me
to dissuade you from this marriage. Yes, a thousand times, yes, it
is true that nature and society are at one in making war on absolute
happiness, because such a condition is opposed to the laws of both;
possibly, also, because Heaven is jealous of its privileges. My love
for you forebodes some disaster to which all my penetration can give no
definite form. I know neither whence nor from whom it will arise; but
one need be no prophet to foretell that the mere weight of a boundless
happiness will overpower you. Excess of joy is harder to bear than any
amount of sorrow.
Against him I have not a word to say. You love him, and in all
probability I have never seen him; but some idle day I hope you will
send me a sketch, however slight, of this rare, fine animal.
If you see me so resigned and cheerful, it is because I am convinced
that, once the honeymoon is over you will both with one accord, fall
back into the common track. Some day, two years hence, when we are
walking along this famous road, you will exclaim, "Why, there is the
chalet which was to be my home for ever!" And you will laugh your dear
old laugh, which shows all your pretty teeth!
I have said nothing yet to Louis; it would be too good an opening for
his ridicule. I shall tell him simply that you are going to be married,
and that you wish it kept secret. Unluckily, you need neither mother
nor sister for your bridal evening. We are in October now; like a brave
woman, you are grappling with winter first. If it were not a question
of marriage, I should say you were taking the bull by the horns. In any
case, you will have in me the most discreet and intelligent of friends.
That mysterious region, known as the centre of Africa, has swallowed
up many travelers, and you seem to me to be launching on an expedition
which, in the domain of sentiment, corresponds to those where so
many explorers have perished, whether in the sands or at the hands of
natives. Your desert is, happily, only two leagues from Paris, so I can
wish you quite cheerfully, "A safe journey and speedy return."