he
terrible situation in which you are, and I have no means of
extracting you therefrom save one. This will perhaps make
you more unhappy still. But I shall be as unhappy as
yourself, _and this gives me the courage to do what I am
required to do_. They would have me, by engaging myself to
another, give a pledge never to be yours: 'tis at this price
that M. de Comminge sets your liberty. It will cost me
perhaps my life, certainly my peace. But I am resolved. I
shall in a few days be married to the Marquis de Benavides.
What I know of his character forewarns me of what I shall
have to suffer; _but I owe you at least so much constancy as
to make only misery for myself in the engagement I am
contracting_.

The extremity of calculated absurdity indicated by the italicised
passages was reached, let it be remembered, by one of the cleverest
women of the century: and the chief excuse for it is that the
restrictions of the La Fayette novel, confined as it was to the upper
classes and to a limited number of elaborately distressing situations,
were very embarrassing.

[Sidenote: Mme. Riccoboni and _Le Marquis de Cressy_.]

Madame Riccoboni, mentioned earlier as continuing _Marianne_, shows the
completed product very fairly. Her _Histoire du Marquis de Cressy_ is a
capital example of the kind. The Marquis is beloved by a charming girl
of sixteen and by a charming widow of six-and-twenty. An envious rival
betrays his attentions to Adelaide de Bugei, and her father makes her
write an epistle which pretty clearly gives him the option of a
declaration in form or a rupture. For a Sensible man, it must be
confessed, the Marquis does not get out of the difficulty too well. She
has slipped into her father's formal note the highly Sensible
postscript, "Vous dire de m'oublier? Ah! Jamais. On m'a force de
l'ecrire; rien ne peut m'obliger a le penser ni le desirer." Apparently
it was not leap-year, for the Marquis replied in a letter nearly as bad
as Willoughby's celebrated epistle in _Sense and Sensibility_.

MADEMOISELLE,--Nothing can console me for having been the
innocent cause of fault being found with the conduct of a
person so worthy of respect as you. I shall approve whatever
you may think proper to do, without considering myself
entitled to ask the reason of your behaviour. How happy
should I be, mademoiselle, if my fortune, and the