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Her
heart beat fast, her feet were nailed to the floor.
"His dear Annette! He loves! he is loved! No hope! What does he say to
her?"
These thoughts rushed through her head and heart. She saw the words
everywhere, even on the bricks of the floor, in letters of fire.
"Resign him already? No, no! I will not read the letter. I ought to go
away--What if I do read it?"
She looked at Charles, then she gently took his head and placed it
against the back of the chair; he let her do so, like a child which,
though asleep, knows its mother's touch and receives, without awaking,
her kisses and watchful care. Like a mother Eugenie raised the
drooping hand, and like a mother she gently kissed the chestnut hair
--"Dear Annette!" a demon shrieked the words in her ear.
"I am doing wrong; but I must read it, that letter," she said. She
turned away her head, for her noble sense of honor reproached her. For
the first time in her life good and evil struggled together in her
heart. Up to that moment she had never had to blush for any action.
Passion and curiosity triumphed. As she read each sentence her heart
swelled more and more, and the keen glow which filled her being as she
did so, only made the joys of first love still more precious.
My dear Annette,--Nothing could ever have separated us but the
great misfortune which has now overwhelmed me, and which no human
foresight could have prevented. My father has killed himself; his
fortune and mine are irretrievably lost. I am orphaned at an age
when, through the nature of my education, I am still a child; and
yet I must lift myself as a man out of the abyss into which I am
plunged. I have just spent half the night in facing my position.
If I wish to leave France an honest man,--and there is no doubt of
that,--I have not a hundred francs of my own with which to try my
fate in the Indies or in America. Yes, my poor Anna, I must seek
my fortune in those deadly climates. Under those skies, they tell
me, I am sure to make it. As for remaining in Paris, I cannot do
so. Neither my nature nor my face are made to bear the affronts,
the neglect, the disdain shown to a ruined man, the son of a
bankrupt! Good God! think of owing two millions! I should be
killed in a duel the first week; therefore I shall not return
there. Your love--the most tender and devoted love which ever
ennobled the heart of man--cannot draw me back. Alas! my beloved,
I have no money with which to go to you, to give and receive a
last kiss from which I might derive some strength for my forlorn
enterprise.
"Poor Charles! I did well to read the letter. I have gold; I will give
it to him," thought Eugenie.
She wiped her eyes, and went on reading.
I have never thought of the miseries of poverty. If I have the
hundred louis required for the mere costs of the journey, I have
not a sou for an outfit.
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