s innocence which we
demand in a wife. You are indeed a wife for a poet, a diplomatist, a
thinker, a man destined to endure the chances and changes of life; and
my admiration is equalled only by the attachment I feel to you. I now
entreat you--if yesterday you were not playing a little comedy when
you accepted the love of a man whose vanity will change to pride if
you accept him, one whose defects will become virtues under your divine
influence--I entreat you do not excite a passion which, in him, amounts
to vice. Jealousy is a noxious element in my soul, and you have revealed
to me its strength; it is awful, it destroys everything--Oh! I do not
mean the jealousy of an Othello," he continued, noticing Modeste's
gesture. "No, no; my thoughts were of myself: I have been so indulged
on that point. You know the affection to which I owe all the happiness I
have ever enjoyed,--very little at the best" (he sadly shook his head).
"Love is symbolized among all nations as a child, because it fancies
the world belongs to it, and it cannot conceive otherwise. Well, Nature
herself set the limit to that sentiment. It was still-born. A tender,
maternal soul guessed and calmed the painful constriction of my
heart,--for a woman who feels, who knows, that she is past the joys of
love becomes angelic in her treatment of others. The duchess has never
made me suffer in my sensibilities. For ten years not a word, not a
look, that could wound me! I attach more value to words, to thoughts,
to looks, than ordinary men. If a look is to me a treasure beyond all
price, the slightest doubt is deadly poison; it acts instantaneously,
my love dies. I believe--contrary to the mass of men, who delight in
trembling, hoping, expecting--that love can only exist in perfect,
infantile, and infinite security. The exquisite purgatory, where women
delight to send us by their coquetry, is a base happiness to which I
will not submit: to me, love is either heaven or hell. If it is hell,
I will have none of it. I feel an affinity with the azure skies of
Paradise within my soul. I can give myself without reserve, without
secrets, doubts or deceptions, in the life to come; and I demand
reciprocity. Perhaps I offend you by these doubts. Remember, however,
that I am only talking of myself--"

"--a good deal, but never too much," said Modeste, offended in every
hole and corner of her pride by this discourse, in which the Duchesse de
Chaulieu served as a dagger. "I am so