am afraid lest he should follow me. I now write to beg you in that
case to be the little Count's guardian. You will find with this a
codicil in which I have expressed my wish; but do not produce it
excepting in case of need, for perhaps I am fatuously vain. My
devotion may perhaps leave Octave inconsolable but willing to live.
--Poor Octave! I wish him a better wife than I am, for he deserves
to be well loved.

"'Since my spiritual spy is married, I bid him remember what the
florist of the Rue Saint-Maur hereby bequeaths to him as a lesson: May
your wife soon be a mother! Fling her into the vulgarest materialism
of household life; hinder her from cherishing in her heart the
mysterious flower of the Ideal--of that heavenly perfection in which I
believed, that enchanted blossom with glorious colors, and whose
perfume disgusts us with reality. I am a Saint-Theresa who has not
been suffered to live on ecstasy in the depths of a convent, with the
Holy Infant, and a spotless winged angel to come and go as she wished.

"'You saw me happy among my beloved flowers. I did not tell you all:
I saw love budding under your affected madness, and I concealed from
you my thoughts, my poetry; I did not admit you to my kingdom of
beauty. Well, well; you will love my child for love of me if he should
one day lose his poor father. Keep my secrets as the grave will keep
them. Do not mourn for me; I have been dead this many a day, if Saint
Bernard was right in saying that where there is no more love there is
no more life.'"

"And the Countess died," said the Consul, putting away the letters and
locking the pocket-book.