THE LILY OF THE VALLEYENVOIFelix de Vandenesse to Madame la Comtesse Natalie de Manerville:I yield to your wishes.It is the privilege of the women whom we lovemore than they love us to make the men who love them ignoretheordinary rules of common-sense.To smooth the frown upon theirbrow,to soften the pout upon their lips,what obstacles wemiraculouslyovercome!We shed our blood,we risk our future!You exact thehistory of my past life;here it is.But rememberthis.Natalie;inobeying you I crush under foot a reluctancehitherto unconquerable.Why are you jealous of the sudden reveries which overtake me in themidst of our happiness?Why show the pretty anger of a petted womanwhen silence grasps me?Could you not play upon the contradictionsof my character without inquiring into the causes of them?Are theresecrets in your heart whichseek absolution through a knowledge ofmine?Ah!Natalie,you have guessed mine;and it is better you shouldknow the whole truth.Yes,my life is shadowed by a phantom;a wordevokes it;it hoversvaguely above me and about me;within my soulare solemn memories,buried in its depths like those marineproductions seen in calmestweather and which the storms of oceancast in fragments on theshore.The mental labor which theexpression of ideas necessitates hasrevived the old,old feelings whichgive me so much pain when theycome suddenly;and if in thisconfession of my past they breakforth in a way that wounds you,remember that you threatened to punish me if I did not obey yourwishes,and do not,therefore,punish my obedience.I would that this,my confidence,might increase your love.Until we meet,Felix.CHAPTER ITWO CHILDHOODSTo what genius fed on tears shall we some day owe that most touching ofall elegies,--the tale of tortures borne silently by souls whose tender rootsfind stony ground in the domestic soil,whose earliest buds are torn apartby rancorous hands,whose flowers are touched by frost at the moment oftheir blossoming?What poet will sing the sorrows of the child whose lipsmust suck a bitter breast,whose smiles are checked by the cruel fire of astern eye?The tale that tells of such poor hearts,oppressed by beingsplaced about them to promote the development of their natures,wouldcontain the true history of my childhood.What vanity could I have wounded,--I a child new-born?What moral orphysical infirmity caused by mother's coldness?Was I the child of duty,whose birth is a mere chance,or was I one whose very life was a reproach?Put to nurse in the country and forgotten by my family for over threeyears,I was treated with such indifference on my return to the parentalroof that even the servants pitied me.I do not know to what feeling orhappy accident I owed my rescue from this first neglect;as a child I wasignorant of it,as a man I have not discovered it.Far from easing my lot,my brother and my two sisters found amusement in making me suffer.The compact in virtue of which children hide each other's peccadilloes,and which early teaches them the principles of honor,was null and voidin my case;more than that,I was often punished for my brother's faults,without being allowed to prove the injustice.The fawning spirit whichseems instinctive in children taught my brother and sisters to join in thepersecutions to which I was subjected,and thus keep in the good gracesof a mother whom they feared as much as I.Was this partly the effect of achildish love of imitation;was it from a need of testing their powers;orwas it simply through lack of pity?Perhaps these causes united to depriveme of the sweets of fraternal intercourse.Disinherited of all affection,Icould love nothing;yet nature had made me loving.Is there an angel whogarners the sighs of feeling hearts rebuffed incessantly?If in many suchhearts the crushed feelings turn to hatred,in mine they condensed and