"Farewell,çoisRené madame; I indulge with you in ideas which anyone but yourself would think very extraordinary addressed to a person of sixteen years; but I know that your sixteen years are only in your face[345]."
"It is long indeed, madame, since I had the pleasure of talking with you, and, if you be sure, as you must be, that this is one of my privations, you will make me no reproaches....
"You have read in my soul; you have seen there that I wore in it the mourning for the public misfortunes and for my own faults, and I could not but feel that this sad disposition formed too strong a contrast with all the brilliancy that encompasses your age and your charms. I even fear lest it should sometimes have made itself felt in the few moments which I have been permitted to spend with you, and I entreat your indulgence therefore. But now, madame, when Providence seems to show us a better future very near at hand, to whom could I better than to yourself confide the joy which I derive from hopes so sweet and, to my belief, so near? Who will fill a greater place than you in the private pleasures which will be mingled with the public joy? I shall then be more susceptible and less unworthy of the delights of your charming company, and how happy I shall deem myself still to count for something in it! If you deign to attach the same value to the fruit of my labour, you shall always be the first to whom I shall hasten to present it. Then no more contradictions nor obstacles; you shall always find me at your orders, and none, I hope, will be able to blame me for this preference. I shall say, 'Here is she who, at the age of illusions and with all the brilliant advantages that can excuse them, has known all the nobility and delicacy of proceedings of the purest friendship and, in the midst of every homage, has remembered an outlaw!' I shall say, 'Here is she whose youth and grace I have seen grow amid a general corruption which was never able to overtake them, she whose reason at sixteen years has often put mine to shame!' and I am sure that none will be tempted to contradict me."
The sadness of events, of age and of religion, hidden under a melting expression, present in these letters a singular admixture of thought and style. Let us return once more to Benjamin Constant's narrative: