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MLLE DE CHAULIEU TO MME DE L'ESTORADE

January

Oh! Renee, you have

body, those beautiful proud features, that natural grace of ifts, those eyes, where the soul can

slake its thirst as at a fountain of love, that heart, with its

exquisite delicacy, that breadth of mind, those rare powers--fruit of

nature and of our interchange of thought--treasures whence should

issue a unique satisfaction for passion and desire, hours of poetry to

outweigh years, joys to esture,--all this is to be buried in the tediue, to vanish in the emptiness of an existence which

you will come to loath! I hate your children before they are born

They will be monsters!

So you know all that lies before you; you have nothing left to hope,

or fear, or suffer? And supposing the gloriousyou face to face with the man destined to rouse you fro!Ah! a cold shiver goes

through ht! Well, at least you have a friend

You, it is understood, are to be the

guardian angel of your valley You will grow familiar with its

beauties, will live with it in all its aspects, till the grandeur of

nature, the sloth of vegetation, coht, become like a part of yourself; and as your eye

rests on the laughing flowers, you will question your own heart When