As for the present, I am delighted with it. I love Calyste; I love
him absolutely, with the folly of a mother, who thinks that all
her son may do is right, even if he tyrannizes a trifle over her.

Guerande, May 15th.

Up to the present moment, dear mamma, I find marriage a delightful
affair, I can spend all my tenderness on the noblest of men whom a
foolish woman disdained for a fiddler,--for that woman evidently
was a fool, and a cold fool, the worst kind! I, in my legitimate
love, am charitable; I am curing his wounds while I lay my heart
open to incurable ones. Yes, the more I love Calyste, the more I
feel that I should die of grief if our present happiness ever
ceased.

I must tell you how the whole family and the circle which meets at
the hotel de Guenic adore me. They are all personages born under
tapestries of the highest warp; in fact, they seem to have stepped
from those old tapestries as if to prove that the impossible may
exist. Some day, when we are alone together, I will describe to
you my Aunt Zephirine, Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, the Chevalier du
Halga, the Demoiselles de Kergarouet, and others. They all, even
to the two servants, Gasselin and Mariotte (whom I wish they would
let me take to Paris), regard me as an angel sent from heaven;
they tremble when I speak. Dear people! they ought to be preserved
under glass.

My mother-in-law has solemnly installed us in the apartments
formerly occupied by herself and her late husband. The scene was
touching. She said to us,--