Ah, Beatrix, let us
go! A boat, a few sailors, and we are there, before any one can
know we have fled this world you fear so much.
You have never been loved. I feel it as I re-read your letter, in
which I fancy I can see that if the reasons you bring forward did
not exist, you would let yourself be loved by me. Beatrix, a
sacred love wipes out the past. Yes, I love you so truly that I
could wish you doubly shamed if so my love might prove itself by
holding you a saint!
You call my love an insult. Oh, Beatrix, you do not think it so!
The love of noble youth--and you have called me that--would honor
a queen. Therefore, to-morrow let us walk as lovers, hand in hand,
among the rocks and beside the sea; your step upon the sands of my
old Brittany will bless them anew to me! Give me this day of
happiness; and that passing alms, unremembered, alas! by you, will
be eternal riches to your
Calyste.
The baroness let fall the letter, without reading all of it. She knelt
upon a chair, and made a mental prayer to God to save her Calyste's
reason, to put his madness, his error far away from him; to lead him
from the path in which she now beheld him.
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