LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO MME. DE L'ESTORADE
Well, my Renee, you are a love of a woman, and I quite agree now that
we can only be virtuous by cheating. Will that satisfy you? Moreover,
the man who loves us is our property; we can make a fool or a genius
of him as we please; only, between ourselves, the former happens more
commonly. You will make yours a genius, and you won't tell the secret
--there are two heroic actions, if you will!
Ah! if there were no future life, how nicely you would be sold, for
this is martyrdom into which you are plunging of your own accord. You
want to make him ambitious and to keep him in love! Child that you
are, surely the last alone is sufficient.
Tell me, to what point is calculation a virtue, or virtue calculation?
You won't say? Well, we won't quarrel over that, since we have Bonald
to refer to. We are, and intend to remain, virtuous; nevertheless at
this moment I believe that you, with all your pretty little knavery,
are a better woman than I am.
Yes, I am shockingly deceitful. I love Felipe, and I conceal it from
him with an odious hypocrisy. I long to see him leap from his tree to
the top of the wall, and from the wall to my balcony--and if he did,
how I should wither him with my scorn! You see, I am frank enough with
you. What restrains me? Where is the mysterious power which prevents me
from telling Felipe, dear fellow, how supremely happy he has made me
by the outpouring of his love--so pure, so absolute, so boundless, so
unobtrusive, and so overflowing?
Mme. de Mirbel is painting my portrait, and I intend to give it to
him, my dear. What surprises me more and more every day is the
animation which love puts into life. How full of interest is every
hour, every action, every trifle! and what amazing confusion between
the past, the future, and the present! One lives in three tenses at
once. Is it still so after the heights of happiness are reached? Oh!
tell me, I implore you, what is happiness? Does it soothe, or does it
excite? I am horribly restless; I seem to have lost all my bearings; a
force in my heart drags me to him, spite of reason and spite of
propriety. There is this gain, that I am better able to enter into
your feelings.
Felipe's happiness consists in feeling himself mine; the aloofness of
his love, his strict obedience, irritate me, just as his attitude of
profound respect provoked me when he was only my Spanish master. I am
tempted to cry out to him as he passes, "Fool, if you love me so much
as a picture, what will it be when you know the real me?"