Mauprat
and sent me a considerable sum of money exclusive of the income due me in the future. The abbé expressed the same mild censure, together with still warmer exhortations. It was easy to see that he preferred Edmée's tranquility to my happiness, and that he was full of genuine joy at my departure. Nevertheless he had a liking for me, and his friendship showed itself touchingly through the cruel satisfaction that was mingled with it. He expressed envy of my lot; proclaimed his enthusiasm for the cause of independence; and declared that he himself had more than once felt tempted to throw off the cassock and take up the musket. All this, however, was mere boyish affectation; his timid, gentle nature always kept him the priest under the mask of the philosopher.
Between these two letters I found a little note without any address, which seemed as if it had been slipped in as an after-thought. I was not slow to see that it was from the one person in the world who was of real interest to me. Yet I had not the courage to open it. I walked up and down the sandy beach, turning over this little piece of paper in my hands, fearful that by reading it I might destroy the kind of desperate calm my resolution had given me. Above all, I dreaded lest it might contain expressions of thanks and enthusiastic joy, behind which I should have divined the rapture of contented love for another.
"What can she be writing to me about?" I said to myself. "Why does she write at all? I do not want her pity, still less her gratitude."
I felt tempted to throw this fateful little note into the sea. Once, indeed, I held it out over the waves, but I immediately pressed it to my bosom, and kept it hidden
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