how you love me, I have been proud to learn that my love is
truly felt. Sometimes I have thought that I loved you more than
you loved me. Now, I admit myself vanquished, you have added the
delightful superiority--of loving--to all the others with which
you are blest. That precious letter in which your soul reveals
itself will lie upon my heart during all your absence; for my
soul, too, is in it; that letter is my glory.

I shall go to live at Lanstrac with my mother. I die to the world;
I will economize my income and pay your debts to their last
farthing. From this day forth, Paul, I am another woman. I bid
farewell forever to society; I will have no pleasures that you
cannot share. Besides, Paul, I ought to leave Paris and live in
retirement. Dear friend, you will soon have a noble reason to make
your fortune. If your courage needed a spur you would find it in
this. Cannot you guess? We shall have a child. Your cherished
desires are granted. I feared to give you one of those false hopes
which hurt so much--have we not had grief enough already on that
score? I was determined not to be mistaken in this good news.
To-day I feel certain, and it makes me happy to shed this joy upon
your sorrows.

This morning, fearing nothing and thinking you still at home, I
went to the Assumption; all things smiled upon me; how could I
foresee misfortune? As I left the church I met my mother; she had
heard of your distress, and came, by post, with all her savings,
thirty thousand francs, hoping to help you. Ah! what a heart is
hers, Paul! I felt joyful, and hurried home to tell you this good
news, and to breakfast with you in the greenhouse, where I ordered
just the dainties that you like. Well, Augustine brought me your
letter,--a letter from you, when we had slept together! A cold
fear seized me; it was like a dream! I read your letter! I read it
weeping, and my mother shared my tears. I was half-dead. Such
love, such courage, such happiness, such misery! The richest
fortunes of the heart, and the momentary ruin of all interests! To
lose you at a moment when my admiration of your greatness thrilled
me! what woman could have resisted such a tempest of emotion? To
know you far away when your hand upon my heart would have stilled
its throbbings; to feel that YOU were not here to give me that
look so precious to me, to rejoice in our new hopes; that I was
not wit