Perhaps I have not yet suffered
enough to have the indulgent manners and the absolute tenderness
which come to us from cruel disappointments. Happiness has its
insolence, and I, I fear, am insolent. Camille will be always your
devoted slave; I should be an unreasonable tyrant. Besides,
Camille was brought to you by your guardian angel, at the turning
point of your life, to show you the career you ought to follow,--a
career in which you cannot fail.
I know Felicite! her tenderness is inexhaustible; she may ignore
the graces of our sex, but she possesses that fruitful strength,
that genius for constancy, that noble intrepidity which makes us
willing to accept the rest. She will marry you to some young girl,
no matter what she suffers. She will find you a free Beatrix--if
it is a Beatrix indeed who answers to your desires in a wife, and
to your dreams; she will smooth all the difficulties in your way.
The sale of a single acre of her ground in Paris would free your
property in Brittany; she will make you her heir; are you not
already her son by adoption?
Alas! what could I do for your happiness? Nothing.
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