XVIII

"26th.

"We have entered on the twelfth year since that blest evening

when, by a look, the beautiful Duchess sealed the promises made by

the exile Francesca. You, dear, are thirty-two, I am thirty-five;

the dear Duke is seventy-seven--that is to say, ten years more

than yours and mine put together, and he still keeps well! My

patience is almost as great as my love, and indeed I need a few

years yet to rise to the level of your name. As you see, I am in

good spirits to-day, I can laugh; that is the effect of hope.

Sadness or gladness, it all comes to me through you. The hope of

success always carries me back to the day following that one on

which I saw you for the first time, when my life became one with

yours as the earth turns to the light. /Qual pianto/ are these

eleven years, for this is the 26th of December, the anniversary of

my arrival at your villa on the Lake of Geneva. For eleven years

have I been crying to you, while you shine like a star set too

high for man to reach it.

"27th.

"No, dearest, do not go to Milan; stay at Belgirate. Milan

terrifies me. I do not like that odious Milanese fashion of

chatting at the Scala every evening with a dozen persons, among

whom it is hard if no one says something sweet. To me solitude is

like the lump of amber in whose heart an insect lives for ever in

unchanging beauty. Thus the heart and soul of a woman remains pure

and unaltered in the form of their first youth. Is it the

/Tedeschi/ that you regret?

"28th.

"Is your statue never to be finished? I should wish to have you in

marble, in painting, in miniature, in every possible form, to

beguile my impatience. I still am waiting for the view of

Belgirate from the south, and that of the balcony; these are all

that I now lack. I am so extremely busy that to-day I can only

write you nothing--but that nothing is everything. Was it not of

nothing that God made the world? That nothing is a word, God's

word: I love you!

"30th.

"Ah! I have received your journal. Thanks for your punctuality.--

So you found great pleasure in seeing all the details of our first

acquaintance thus set down? Alas! even while disguising them I was

sorely afraid of offending you. We had no stories, and a /Review/

without stories is a beauty without hair. Not being inventive by

nature, and in sheer despair, I took the only poetry in my soul,

the only adventure in my memory, and pitched it in the key in

which it would bear telling; nor did I ever cease to think of you

while writing the only literary production that will ever come

from my heart, I cannot say from my pen. Did not the

transformation of your fierce Sormano into Gina make you laugh?

"You ask after my health. Well, it is better than in Paris. Though

I work enormously, the peacefulness of the surroundings has its

effect on the mind. What really tries and ages me, dear angel, is

the anguish of mortified vanity, the perpetual friction of Paris

life, the struggle of rival ambitions. This peace is a balm.

"If you could imagine the pleasure your letter gives me!--the

long, kind letter in which you tell me the most trivial incidents

of your life. No! you women can never know to what a degree a true

lover is interested in these trifles. It was an immense pleasure

to see the pattern of your new dress. Can it be a matter of

indifference to me to know what you wear? If your lofty brow is

knit? If our writers amuse you? If Canalis' songs delight you? I

read the books you read. Even to your boating on the lake every

incident touched me. Your letter is as lovely, as sweet as your

soul! Oh! flower of heaven, perpetually adored, could I have lived

without those dear letters, which for eleven years have upheld me

in my difficult path like a light, like a perfume, like a steady

chant, like some divine nourishment, like everything which can

soothe and comfort life.

"Do not fail me! If you knew what anxiety I suffer the day before

they are due, or the pain a day's delay can give me! Is she ill?

Is /he/? I am midway between hell and paradise.

"/O mia cara diva/, keep up your music, exercise your voice,

practise. I am enchanted with the coincidence of employments and

hours by which, though separated by the Alps, we live by precisely

the same rule. The thought charms me and gives me courage. The

first time I undertook to plead here--I forget to tell you this--I

fancied that you were listening to me, and I suddenly felt the

flash of inspiration which lifts the poet above mankind. If I am

returned to the Chamber--oh! you must come to Paris to be present

at my first appearance there!

"30th, Evening.

"Good heavens, how I love you! Alas! I have intrusted too much to

my love and my hopes. An accident which should sink that

overloaded bark would end my life. For three years now I have not

seen you, and at the thought of going to Belgirate my heart beats

so wildly that I am forced to stop.--To see you, to hear that

girlish caressing voice! To embrace in my gaze that ivory skin,

glistening under the candlelight, and through which I can read

your noble mind! To admire your fingers playing on the keys, to

drink in your whole soul in a look, in the tone of an /Oime/ or an

/Alberto/! To walk by the blossoming orange-trees, to live a few

months in the bosom of that glorious scenery!--That is life. What

folly it is to run after power, a name, fortune! But at Belgirate

there is everything; there is poetry, there is glory! I ought to

have made myself your steward, or, as that dear tyrant whom we

cannot hate proposed to me, live there as /cavaliere servente/,

only our passion was too fierce to allow of it.

"Farewell, my angel, forgive me my next fit of sadness in

consideration of this cheerful mood; it has come as a beam of

light from the torch of Hope, which has hitherto seemed to me a

Will-o'-the-wisp."

"How he loves her!" cried Rosalie, dropping the letter, which seemed

heavy in her hand. "After eleven years to write like this!"

"Mariette," said Mademoiselle de Watteville to her maid next morning,

"go and post this letter. Tell Jerome that I know all I wish to know,

and that he is to serve Monsieur Albert faithfully. We will confess

our sins, you and I, without saying to whom the letters belonged, nor

to whom they were going. I was in the wrong; I alone am guilty."

"Mademoiselle has been crying?" said Mariette.

"Yes, but I do not want that my mother should perceive it; give me

some very cold water."