Letters of Two Brides | Page 3

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Etext prepared by Dagny, [email protected] and John Bickers,
[email protected]

Letters of Two Brides
by Honore de Balzac
Translated by R. S. Scott

DEDICATION
To George Sand
Your name, dear George, while casting a reflected radiance on my book,
can gain no new glory from this page. And yet it is neither self-interest
nor diffidence which has led me to place it there, but only the wish that
it should bear witness to the solid friendship between us, which has
survived our wanderings and separations, and triumphed over the busy
malice of the world. This feeling is hardly likely now to change. The
goodly company of friendly names, which will remain attached to my
works, forms an element of pleasure in the midst of the vexation caused
by their increasing number. Each fresh book, in fact, gives rise to fresh
annoyance, were it only in the reproaches aimed at my too prolific pen,
as though it could rival in fertility the world from which I draw my
models! Would it not be a fine thing, George, if the future antiquarian
of dead literatures were to find in this company none but great names
and generous hearts, friends bound by pure and holy ties, the illustrious
figures of the century? May I not justly pride myself on this assured
possession, rather than on a popularity necessarily unstable? For him
who knows you well, it is happiness to be able to sign himself, as I do
here,

Your friend, DE BALZAC.
PARIS, June 1840.

LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES

FIRST PART

I
LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO RENEE DE MAUCOMBE. PARIS,
September.
Sweetheart, I too am free! And I am the first too, unless you have
written to Blois, at our sweet tryst of letter-writing.
Raise those great black eyes of yours, fixed on my opening sentence,
and keep this excitement for the letter which shall tell you of my first
love. By the way, why always "first?" Is there, I wonder, a second
love?
Don't go running on like this, you will say, but tell me rather how you
made your escape from the convent where you were to take your vows.
Well, dear, I don't know about the Carmelites, but the miracle of my
own deliverance was, I can assure you, most humdrum. The cries of an
alarmed conscience triumphed over the dictates of a stern policy
--there's the whole mystery. The sombre melancholy which seized me
after you left hastened the happy climax, my aunt did not want to see
me die of a decline, and my mother, whose one unfailing cure for my
malady was a novitiate, gave way before her.
So I am in Paris, thanks to you, my love! Dear Renee, could you have
seen me the day I found myself parted from you, well might you have
gloried in the deep impression you had made on so youthful a bosom.

We had lived so constantly together, sharing our dreams and letting our
fancy roam together, that I