My dear Louise,--I have read and re-read your letter, and the more
deeply I enter into its spirit, the clearer does it become to me that
it is the letter, not of a woman, but of a child. You are the same old
Louise, and you forget, what I used to repeat over and over again to
you, that the passion of love belongs rightly to a state of nature, and
has only been purloined by civilization. So fleeting is its character,
that the resources of society are powerless to modify its primitive
condition, and it becomes the effort of all noble minds to make a man
of the infant Cupid. But, as you yourself admit, such love ceases to be
natural.
Society, my dear abhors sterility; but substituting a lasting sentiment
for the mere passing frenzy of nature, it has succeeded in creating
that greatest of all human inventions--the family, which is the enduring
basis of all organized society. To the accomplishment of this end, it
has sacrificed the individual, man as well as woman; for we must not
shut our eyes to the fact that a married man devotes his energy, his
power, and all his possession to his wife. Is it not she who reaps the
benefit of all his care? For whom, if not for her, are the luxury and
wealth, the position and distinction, the comfort and the gaiety of the
home?
Oh! my sweet, once again you have taken the wrong turning in life. To be
adored is a young girl's dream, which may survive a few springtimes; it
cannot be that of the mature woman, the wife and mother. To a woman's
vanity it is, perhaps, enough to know that she can command adoration if
she likes. If you would live the life of a wife and mother, return, I
beg of you, to Paris. Let me repeat my warning: It is not misfortune
which you have to dread, as others do--it is happiness.
Listen to me, my child! It is the simple things of life--bread, air,
silence--of which we do not tire; they have no piquancy which can create
distaste; it is highly-flavored dishes which irritate the palate, and in
the end exhaust it. Were it possible that I should to-day be loved by
a man for whom I could conceive a passion, such as yours for Gaston, I
would still cling to the duties and the children, who are so dear to
me. To a woman's heart the feelings of a mother are among the simple,
natural, fruitful, and inexhaustible things of life. I can recall
the day, now nearly fourteen years ago, when I embarked on a life of
self-sacrifice with the despair of a shipwrecked mariner clinging to the
mast of his vessel; now, as I invoke the memory of past years, I feel
that I would make the same choice again. No other guiding principle
is so safe, or leads to such rich reward. The spectacle of your life,
which, for all the romance and poetry with which you invest it, still
remains based on nothing but a ruthless selfishness, has helped to
strengthen my convictions. This is the last time I shall speak to you in
this way; but I could not refrain from once more pleading with you when
I found that your happiness had been proof against the most searching of
all trials.
And one more point I must urge on you, suggested by my meditations on
your retirement. Life, whether of the body or the heart, consists in
certain balanced movements. Any excess introduced into the working of
this routine gives rise either to pain or to pleasure, both of which are
a mere fever of the soul, bound to be fugitive because nature is not
so framed as to support it long. But to make of life one long excess is
surely to choose sickness for one's portion. You are sick because you
maintain at the temperature of passion a feeling which marriage ought to
convert into a steadying, purifying influence.
Yes, my sweet, I see it clearly now; the glory of a home consists in
this very calm, this intimacy, this sharing alike of good and evil,
which the vulgar ridicule. How noble was the reply of the Duchesse de
Sully, the wife of the great Sully, to some one who remarked that her
husband, for all his grave exterior, did not scruple to keep a mistress.
"What of that?" she said. "I represent the honor of the house, and
should decline to play the part of a courtesan there."
But you, Louise, who are naturally more passionate than tender, would
be at once the wife and the mistress. With the soul of a Heloise and the
passions of a Saint Theresa, you slip the leash on all your impulses, so
long as they are sanctioned by law; in a word, you degrade the marriage
rite. Surely the tables are turned. The reproaches you once heaped on me
for immorally, as you said, seizing the means of happiness from the
very outset of my wedded life, might be directed against yourself for
grasping at everything which may serve your passion. What! must nature
and society alike be in bondage to your caprice? You are the old Louise;
you have never acquired the qualities which ought to be a woman's;
self-willed and unreasonable as a girl, you introduce withal into your
love the keenest and most mercenary of calculations! Are you sure that,
after all, the price you ask for your toilets is not too high? All these
precautions are to my mind very suggestive of mistrust.
Oh, dear Louise, if only you knew the sweetness of a mother's efforts
to discipline herself in kindness and gentleness to all about her! My
proud, self-sufficing temper gradually dissolved into a soft melancholy,
which in turn has been swallowed up by those delights of motherhood
which have been its reward. If the early hours were toilsome, the
evening will be tranquil and clear. My dread is lest the day of your
life should take the opposite course.
When I had read your letter to a close, I prayed God to send you among
us for a day, that you might see what family life really is, and learn
the nature of those joys, which are lasting and sweeter than tongue can
tell, because they are genuine, simple, and natural. But, alas! what
chance have I with the best of arguments against a fallacy which makes
you happy? As I write these words, my eyes fill with tears. I had felt
so sure that some months of honeymoon would prove a surfeit and restore
you to reason. But I see that there is no limit to your appetite, and
that, having killed a man who loved you, you will not cease till you
have killed love itself. Farewell, dear misguided friend. I am in
despair that the letter which I hoped might reconcile you to society by
its picture of my happiness should have brought forth only a paean of
selfishness. Yes, your love is selfish; you love Gaston far less for
himself than for what he is to you.