Letters of Two Brides | Page 4

verily believe our souls had become welded
together, like those two Hungarian girls, whose death we heard about
from M. Beauvisage--poor misnamed being! Never surely was man
better cut out by nature for the post of convent physician!
Tell me, did you not droop and sicken with your darling?
In my gloomy depression, I could do nothing but count over the ties
which bind us. But it seemed as though distance had loosened them; I
wearied of life, like a turtle-dove widowed of her mate. Death smiled
sweetly on me, and I was proceeding quietly to die. To be at Blois, at
the Carmelites, consumed by dread of having to take my vows there, a
Mlle. de la Valliere, but without her prelude, and without my Renee!
How could I not be sick--sick unto death?
How different it used to be! That monotonous existence, where every
hour brings its duty, its prayer, its task, with such desperate regularity
that you can tell what a Carmelite sister is doing in any place, at any
hour of the night or day; that deadly dull routine, which crushes out all
interest in one's surroundings, had become for us two a world of life
and movement. Imagination had thrown open her fairy realms, and in
these our spirits ranged at will, each in turn serving as magic steed to
the other, the more alert quickening the drowsy; the world from which
our bodies were shut out became the playground of our fancy, which
reveled there in frolicsome adventure. 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.
Before replying, I kissed her hands.
"Dear aunt," I said, "I shall never forget your kindness; and if it has not
made your nunnery all that it ought to be for my health of body and

soul, you may be sure nothing short of a broken heart will bring me
back again--and that you would not wish