First Part Chapter 21

As for society, I run less risk in meeting my lover thus than when I
smile to him in the drawing-rooms of Mme. de Maufrigneuse and the old
Marquise de Beauseant, where spies now surround us on every side; and
Heaven only knows how people stare at the girl, suspected of a
weakness for a grotesque, like Macumer

. I cannot tell you to what a state of agitation I am reduced by
dreaming of this idea, and the time I have given to planning its
execution. I wanted you badly. What happy hours we should have
chattered away, lost in the mazes of uncertainty, enjoying in
anticipation all the delights and horrors of a first meeting in the
silence of night, under the noble lime-trees of the Chaulieu mansion,
with the moonlight dancing through the leaves! As I sat alone, every
nerve tingling, I cried, "Oh! Renee, where are you?" Then your letter
came, like a match to gunpowder, and my last scruples went by the
board.

Through the window I tossed to my bewildered adorer an exact tracing
of the key of the little gate at the end of the garden, together with
this note: "Your madness must really be put a stop to. If you broke your
neck, you would ruin the reputation of the woman you profess to
love. Are you worthy of a new proof of regard, and do you deserve
that I should talk with you under the limes at the foot of the
garden at the hour when the moon throws them into shadow?"