The Cross of Berny | Page 2

laugh at my sadness, and at the melancholy tone in which I announce this intelligence.
Monsieur de Monbert is the most witty and agreeable man in Paris; he is noble-hearted, generous and ...in fact fascinating!... and I love him! He alone pleases me; in his absence I weary of everything; in his presence I am satisfied and happy--the hours glide away uncounted; I have perfect faith in his good heart and sound judgment, and proudly recognise his incontestable superiority--yes, I admire, respect, and, I repeat it, love him!...
Yet, the promise I have made to dedicate my life to him, frightens me, and for a month I have had but one thought--to postpone this marriage I wished for--to fly from this man whom I have chosen!...
I question my heart, my experience, my imagination, for an answer to this inexplicable contradiction; and to interpret so many fears, find nothing but school-girl philosophy and poetic fancies, which you will excuse because you love me, and I know my imaginary sufferings will at least awaken pity in your sympathetic breast.
Yes, my dear Valentine, I am more to be pitied now, than I was in the days of my distress and desolation. I, who so courageously braved the blows of adversity, feel weak and trembling under the weight of a too brilliant fortune.
This happy destiny for which I alone am responsible, alarms me more than did the bitter lot that was forced upon me one year ago.
The actual trials of poverty exhaust the field of thought and prevent us from nursing imaginary cares, for when we have undergone the torture of our own forebodings, struggled with the impetuosity and agony of a nature surrendered to itself, we are disposed to look almost with relief on tangible troubles, and to end by appreciating the cares of poverty as salutary distractions from the sickly anxieties of an unemployed mind.
Oh! believe me to be serious, and accuse me not of comic-opera philosophy, my dear Valentine! I feel none of that proud disdain for importunate fortune that we read of in novels; nor do I regret "my pretty boat," nor "my cottage by the sea;" here, in this beautiful drawing-room of the Hotel de Langeac, writing to you, I do not sigh for my gloomy garret in the Marais, where my labors day and night were most tiresome, because a mere parody of the noblest arts, an undignified labor making patience and courage ridiculous, a cruel game which we play for life while cursing it.
No! I regret not this, but I do regret the indolence, the idleness of mind succeeding such trivial exertions. For then there were no resolutions to make, no characters to study, and, above all, no responsibility to bear, nothing to choose, nothing to change.
I had but to follow every morning the path marked out by necessity the evening before.
If I were able to copy or originate some hundred designs; if I possessed sufficient carmine or cobalt to color some wretched engravings--worthless, but fashionable--which I must myself deliver on the morrow; if I could succeed in finding some new patterns for embroidery and tapestry, I was content--and for recreation indulged at evenings in the sweetest, that is most absurd, reveries.
Revery then was a rest to me, now it is a labor, and a dangerous labor when too often resorted to; good thoughts then came to assist me in my misery; now, vexatious presentiments torment my happiness. Then the uncertainty of my future made me mistress of events. I could each day choose a new destiny, and new adventures. My unexpected and undeserved misfortune was so complete that I had nothing more to dread and everything to hope for, and experienced a vague feeling of gratitude for the ultimate succor that I confidently expected.
I would pass long hours gazing from my window at a little light shining from the fourth-story window of a distant house. What strange conjectures I made, as I silently watched the mysterious beacon!
Sometimes, in contemplating it, I recalled the questions addressed by Childe Harold to the tomb of Cecilia Metella, asking the cold marble if she who rested there were young and beautiful, a dark-eyed, delicate-featured woman, whose destiny was that reserved by Heaven for those it loves; or was she a venerable matron who had outlived her charms, her children and her kindred?
So I also questioned this solitary light:
To what distressed soul did it lend its aid? Some anxious mother watching and praying beside her sick child, or some youthful student plunging with stern delight into the arcana of science, to wrest from the revealing spirits of the night some luminous truth?
But while the poet questioned death and the past, I questioned the living present, and more than once the distant beacon seemed to answer me. I even imagined that this busy light