Still, I gained what I sought. "What was that?" you will ask. Ah!
mother dear, I have seen too much of love going on around me not
to know how to put a little of it into practice. Well, Calyste
ended the poem of his miseries with the warmest protestations of
an absolute forgetting of what he called his madness. All kinds of
affirmations have to be signed, you know. The happy unhappy one
took my hand, carried it to his lips, and, after that, he kept it
for a long time clasped in his own. A declaration followed. /That
one/ seemed to me more conformable than the first to the demands
of our new condition, though our lips never said a word. Perhaps I
owed it to the vigorous indignation I felt and showed at the bad
taste of a woman foolish enough not to love my beautiful, my
glorious Calyste.

They are calling me to play a game of cards, which I do not yet
understand. I will finish my letter to-morrow. To leave you at
this moment to make a fifth at /mouche/ (that is the name of the
game) can only be done in the depths of Brittany--Adieu.

Your Sabine.


Guerande, May, 1838.

I take up my Odyssey. On the third day your children no longer
used the ceremonious "you;" they thee'd and thou'd each other like
lovers. My mother-in-law, enchanted to see us so happy, is trying
to take your place to me, dear mother, and, as often happens when
people play a part to efface other memories, she has been so
charming that she is, /almost/, you to me.