Has the duke obtained for me the thing we wanted; and shall you,
my dearest life, be ordered to drink the Baden waters next year?
The billing and cooing of the "handsome disconsolate," compared
with the accents of our happy love--so true and changeless for now
ten years!--have given me a great contempt for marriage. I had
never seen the thing so near. Ah, dearest! what the world calls a
"false step" brings two beings nearer together than the law--does
it not?
The concluding idea served as a text for two pages of reminiscences
and aspirations a little too confidential for publication.
The evening before the day on which Canalis put the above epistle into
the post, Butscha, under the name of Jean Jacmin, had received a
letter from his fictitious cousin, Philoxene, and had mailed his
answer, which thus preceded the letter of the poet by about twelve
hours. Terribly anxious for the last two weeks, and wounded by
Melchior's silence, the duchess herself dictated Philoxene's letter to
her cousin, and the moment she had read the answer, rather too
explicit for her quinquagenary vanity, she sent for the banker and
made close inquiries as to the exact fortune of Monsieur Mignon.
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