"I can accept a death-blow, but I will not endure for
twenty-five years, like my mother. If, at the end of three years of
perfect, unwavering love, you can be unfaithful to me with your
father-in-law's mistress, what rivals may I expect to have in later
years? Indeed, monsieur, you have begun your career of profligacy
much earlier than my father did, the life of dissipation, which is
a disgrace to the father of a family, which undermines the respect
of his children, and which ends in shame and despair.
"I am not unforgiving. Unrelenting feelings do not beseem erring
creatures living under the eye of God. If you win fame and fortune
by sustained work, if you have nothing to do with courtesans and
ignoble, defiling ways, you will find me still a wife worthy of
you.
"I believe you to be too much a gentleman, Monsieur le Comte, to
have recourse to the law. You will respect my wishes, and leave me
under my mother's roof. Above all, never let me see you there. I
have left all the money lent to you by that odious woman.--
Farewell.
"HORTENSE HULOT."
This letter was written in anguish. Hortense abandoned herself to the
tears, the outcries of murdered love. She laid down her pen and took
it up again, to express as simply as possible all that passion
commonly proclaims in this sort of testamentary letter. Her heart went
forth in exclamations, wailing and weeping; but reason dictated the
words.
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