And it is a great deal.
This, dear, is no intrigue, no adventure; no gallantry, as you men
say, can come of it, I warn you frankly. It involves my life, and
more than that,--something that causes me remorse for the many
thoughts that fly to you in flocks--it involves my father's and my
mother's life. I adore them, and my choice must please them; they
must find a son in you.
Tell me, to what extent can the superb spirits of your kind, to
whom God has given the wings of his angels, without always adding
their amiability,--how far can they bend under a family yoke, and
put up with its little miseries? That is a text I have meditated
upon. Ah! though I said to my heart before I came to you, Forward!
Onward! it did not tremble and palpitate any the less on the way;
and I did not conceal from myself the stoniness of the path nor
the Alpine difficulties I had to encounter. I thought of all in my
long, long meditations. Do I not know that eminent men like you
have known the love they have inspired quite as well as that which
they themselves have felt; that they have had many romances in
their lives,--you particularly, who send forth those airy visions
of your soul that women rush to buy? Yet still I cried to myself,
"Onward!" because I have studied, more than you give me credit
for, the geography of the great summits of humanity, which you
tell me are so cold.
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