of a wife, and you have almost made me blush
for my device. Who shall say which of us is right, which is wrong?
Perhaps we are both right and both wrong. Perhaps this is the heavy
price which society exacts for our furbelows, our titles, and our
children.

I too have my red camellias, but they bloom on my lips in smiles for my
double charge--the father and the son--whose slave and mistress I am.
But, my dear, your last letters made me feel what I have lost! You have
taught me all a woman sacrifices in marrying. One single glance did
I take at those beautiful wild plateaus where you range at your sweet
will, and I will not tell you the tears that fell as I read. But regret
is not remorse, though it may be first cousin to it.

You say, "Marriage has made you a philosopher!" Alas! bitterly did I
feel how far this was from the truth, as I wept to think of you swept
away on love's torrent. But my father has made me read one of the
profoundest thinkers of these parts, the man on whom the mantle of
Boussuet has fallen, one of those hard-headed theorists whose words
force conviction. While you were reading _Corinne_, I conned Bonald; and
here is the whole secret of my philosophy. He revealed to me the Family
in its strength and holiness. According to Bonald, your father was right
in his homily.

Farewell, my dear fancy, my friend, my wild other self.

XIX. 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 o