The very Lives of the Saints helped us to understand what was so
carefully left unsaid! But the day when I was reft of your sweet
company, I became a true Carmelite, such as they appeared to us, a
modern Danaid, who, instead of trying to fill a bottomless barrel,
draws every day, from Heaven knows what deep, an empty pitcher,
thinking to find it full. My aunt knew nothing of this inner life.
How could she, who has made a
paradise for herself within the two acres of her convent, understand
my revolt against life? A religious life, if embraced by girls of our
age, demands either an extreme simplicity of soul, such as we,
sweetheart, do not possess, or else an ardor for self-sacrifice like
that which makes my aunt so noble a character. But she sacrificed
herself for a brother to whom she was devoted; to do the same for an
unknown person or an idea is surely more than can be asked of mortals.
For the last fortnight I have been gulping down so many reckless
words, burying so many reflections in my bosom, and accumulating such
a store of things to tell, fit for your ear alone, that I should
certainly have been suffocated but for the resource of letter-writing
as a sorry substitute for our beloved talks. How hungry one's heart
gets! I am beginning my journal this morning, and I picture to myself
that yours is already started, and that, in a few days, I shall be at
home in your beautiful Gemenos valley, which I know only through your
descriptions, just as you will live that Paris life, revealed to you
hitherto only in our dreams.
Well, then, sweet child, know that on a certain morning--a red-letter
day in my life--there arrived from Paris a lady companion and
Philippe, the last remaining of my grandmother's valets, charged to
carry me off. When my aunt summoned me to her room and told me the
news, I could not speak for joy, and only gazed at her stupidly.
"My child," she said, in her guttural voice, "I can see that you leave
me without regret, but this farewell is not the last; we shall meet
again. God has placed on your forehead the sign of the elect. You have
the pride which leads to heaven or to hell, but your nature is too
noble to choose the downward path. I know you better than you know
yourself; with you, passion, I can see, will be very different from
what it is with most women."
She drew me gently to her and kissed my forehead. The kiss made my
flesh creep, for it burned with that consuming fire which eats away
her life, which has turned to black the azure of her eyes, and
softened the lines about them, has furrowed the warm ivory of her
temples, and cast a sallow tinge over the beautiful face.