Second Part Chapter 50

MME. DE L'ESTORADE TO MME. DE MACUMER

Louise, can it be that, with all your knowledge of the deep-seated
mischief wrought by the indulgence of passion, even within the heart
of marriage, you are planning a life of wedded solitude? Having
sacrificed your first husband in the course of a fashionable career,
would you now fly to the desert to consume a second? What stores of
misery you are laying up for yourself!

But I see from the way you have set about it that there is no going
back. The man who has overcome your aversion to a second marriage must
indeed possess some magic of mind and heart; and you can only be left
to your illusions. But have you forgotten your former criticism on
young men? Not one, you would say, but has visited haunts of shame,
and has besmirched his purity with the filth of the streets. Where is
the change, pray--in them or in you?

You are a lucky woman to be able to believe in happiness. I have not
the courage to blame you for it, though the instinct of affection
urges me to dissuade you from this marriage. Yes, a thousand times,
yes, it is true that nature and society are at one in making war on
absolute happiness, because such a condition is opposed to the laws of
both; possibly, also, because Heaven is jealous of its privileges. My
love for you forebodes some disaster to which all my penetration can
give no definite form. I know neither whence nor from whom it will
arise; but one need be no prophet to foretell that the mere weight of
a boundless happiness will overpower you. Excess of joy is harder to
bear than any amount of sorrow.