Chapter 12

CORRESPONDENCE

When Calyste reached home, he did not leave his room until dinner
time; and after dinner he went back to it. At ten o'clock his mother,
uneasy at his absence, went to look for him, and found him writing in
the midst of a pile of blotted and half-torn paper. He was writing to
Beatrix, for distrust of Camille had come into his mind. The air and
manner of the marquise during their brief interview in the garden had
singularly encouraged him.

No first love-letter ever was or ever will be, as may readily be
supposed, a brilliant effort of the mind. In all young men not tainted
by corruption such a letter is written with gushings from the heart,
too overflowing, too multifarious not to be the essence, the elixir of
many other letters begun, rejected, and rewritten.

Here is the one that Calyste finally composed and which he read aloud
to his poor, astonished mother. To her the old mansion seemed to have
taken fire; this love of her son flamed up in it like the glare of a
conflagration.

Calyste to Madame la Marquise de Rochefide.

Madame,--I loved you when you were to me but a dream; judge,
therefore, of the force my love acquired when I saw you. The dream
was far surpassed by the reality. It is my grief and my misfortune
to have nothing to say to you that you do not know already of your
beauty and your charms; and yet, perhaps, they have awakened in no
other heart so deep a sentiment as they have in me.

In so many ways you are beautiful; I have studied you so much
while thinking of you day and night that I have penetrated the
mysteries of your being, the secrets of your heart, and your
delicacy, so little appreciated. Have you ever been loved,
understood, adored as you deserve to be?

Let me tell you now that there is not a trait in your nature which
my heart does not interpret; your pride is understood by mine; the
grandeur of your glance, the grace of your bearing, the
distinction of your movements,--all things about your person are
in harmony with the thoughts, the hopes, the desires hidden in the
depths of your soul; it is because I have divined them all that I
think myself worthy of your notice. If I had not become, within
the last few days, another yourself, I could not speak to you of
myself; this letter, indeed, relates far more to you than it does
to me.

Beatrix, in order to write to you, I have silenced my youth, I
have laid aside myself, I have aged my thoughts,--or, rather, it
is you who have aged them, by this week of dreadful sufferings
caused, innocently indeed, by you.

Do not think me one of those common lovers at whom I have heard
you laugh so justly. What merit is there in loving a young and
beautiful and wise and