tch her. This lovely creature, this flower, this rosebud which has blossomed in one's heart to be handed over to a man who will tear it from the stem and leave it bare.   Farewell now, for in truth you don't deserve my friendship and I hardly know how to write. Oh, answer me, dear Louise. Letters of two brides by Honoré de Balzac letter 52 Madame Gaston, to Madame de l'Estrade The charlée So, after a silence of two years you are pricked by curiosity and want to know why I have not written. My dear Renee, there are no words, no images, no language to express my happiness. That we have strength to bear it sums up all I could say. It costs us no effort, for we are in perfect sympathy. The whole two years have known no note of discord in the harmony, no jarring word in the interchange of feeling, no shade of difference in our lightest wish. Not one in this long succession of days has failed to bear its own peculiar fruit. Not a moment has passed without being enriched by the play of fancy. So far are we from dreading the canker of monotony in our life that our only fear is lest it should not be long enough to contain all the poetic creations of a love as rich and varied in its development as nature herself. Of disappointment not a trace. We find more pleasure in being together than on the first day and each hour as it goes by discloses fresh reason for our love. Every day as we take our evening stroll after dinner we tell each other that we really must go and see what is doing in Paris in the night talk of going to Switzerland.  And to-morrow comes, and we are in no hurry to get up and we breakfast in our bedroom. Then midday is on us and it is too hot. A siesta seems appropriate. Then Gaston wishes to look at me and he gazes on my face as though it were a picture of myself in this contemplation which, as you may suppose, is not one-sided. Tears rise to the eyes of both as we think of our love and tremble. I am still the mistress, pretending that is to give less than I receive, and I revel in this deception. To a woman what can be sweeter than to see passion ever held in check by tenderness and the man who is her master stayed, like a timid suitor, who she chooses. You asked me to describe him, but, Rene, it is not possible to make a portrait of the man we love. How could the heart be kept out of the work? Besides to be frank between ourselves we may admit that one of the dire effects of civilization on our manners is to make of man in society a being so utterly different from the natural man of strong feeling that sometimes not a single point of likeness can be found between these two aspects of the same person. The man who falls into the most graceful operatic poses, as he pours sweet nothings into your ear by the fire at night, may be entirely destitute of those more intimate charms which a woman values. On the other hand an ugly, boorish, badly dressed figure may mark a man endowed with the very genius of love, and who has a perfect mastery over situations which might baffle us with our superficial graces. A man whose conventional aspect accords with his real nature, who, in the intimacy of wedded love, possesses that inborn grace which can be neither given nor acquired, but which Greek art has embodied in statuary, that careless innocence of the ancient poets which, even in frank undress, seems to clothe the soul as with a veil of modesty. This is our ideal, born of our own conceptions, and linked with the universal harmony which is to be the reality underlying all created things. To find this ideal in life is the problem which haunts the imagination of every woman. In Gaston I have found it. Ah, dear, I did not know what love could be, united to youth, talent, and beauty. Gaston has no affectations. He moves in an instinctive and unstudied grace. When we walk alone together in the woods, his arm round my waist, mine resting on his shoulder, body fitting to body, and head touching head, our step is so even, uniform, and gentle, that those who see us pass by night take the vision for a single figure gliding over the graveled walks, like one of Homer's immortals. A like harmony exists in our desires, our thoughts, our words, more than once on some evening when a passing shower has left the leaves glistening and the moist grass bright with a more vivid green. We chanced that we ended our walk without uttering a word, as we listened to the patter of falling drops and feasted our eyes on the scarlet sunset, flaring on the hill-tops, or dying with a warmer tone, the gray of the tree-trunks. Beyond a doubt our thoughts then rose to heaven in silent prayer, pleading as it were for our happiness. At times a cry would escape us at the moment when some sudden bend on the path opened up fresh beauties. What words can tell how, honey-sweet, how full of meaning is a kiss half timidly exchanged within the sanctuary of nature? It is as though God had created us to worship in this fashion. And we return home, each more deeply in love than ever. A love so passionate between old married people would be an outrage on society in Paris, only in the heart of the woods, like lovers, can we give scope to it. To come to particulars Gaston is of middle height, the height proper to all men of purpose. Neither stout nor thin, his figure is admirably made, with ample fullness in the proportions, while every motion is agile. He leaps a ditch with the easy grace of a wild animal. Whatever his attitude he seems to have an instinctive sense of balance, and this is very rare in men who are given to thought. Though a dark man he has an instinctive sense of balance, his jet-black hair contrasts finally with the lusterless kints of the neck and forehead. He has the tragic head of Louis XIII. His moustache and tuft have been allowed to grow, but I made him shave the whiskers and beard which were getting too common. An honourable poverty has been his safeguard, and handed him over to me, unsoiled by the loose life which ruined so many young men. His teeth are iron. His keen blue eyes, for me full of tenderness, will flash like lightning at any rousing thought. Like all men of strong character and powerful mind he has an admirable temper. It's even this would surprise you, as it did me. I have listened to the tale of many a woman's home troubles. I have heard of the moods and depression of men dissatisfied with themselves, who either won't get old or age carry about through life the rankling memory of some youthful excess whose veins run poison and whose eyes are never frankly happy men who cloak suspicion under bad temper and make their women pay for an hour's peace by a morning of annoyance, who take vengeance on us for a beauty which is hateful to them because they have ceased themselves to be attractive. All these are horrors unknown to youth. They are the penalty of unequal unions. Oh, my dear, don't marry Atheneus to an old man. But his smile, how I feast on it, a smile which is always there yet always fresh through the play of subtle fancy, a speaking smile which makes of the lips a storehouse for thoughts of love and unspoken gratitude, a smile which links present joys to past. For nothing is allowed to drop out of our common life. The smallest works of nature have become part and parcel of our joy. In these delightful woods everything is alive and eloquent of ourselves. An old moss-grown oak, near the woodsman's house on the roadside, reminds us how we sat there, weary under its shade, while Gaston taught me about the mosses at our feet and told me their story till, gradually ascending from science to science, we touched the very confines of creation. There is something so kindred in our minds that they seem to me like two editions of the same book. You see what a literary tendency I have developed. We both have the habit or the gift of looking at every subject broadly, of taking in all its points of view and the proof we are constantly giving ourselves of the singleness of our inward vision is an ever-new pleasure. We have actually come to look on this community of mind as a pledge of love and if it ever failed us it would mean as much to us as would a breach of fidelity in an ordinary home. My life, full as it is of pleasures, would seem to you nevertheless extremely laborious. To begin with, my dear, you must know that Luise Armand Marie de Chaleau does her own room. I could not bear that a hired menial, some woman or girl from the outside, should become initiated, literary touch again, into the secrets of my bedroom. The various trifles connected with the worship of my heart partake and sacred character. This is not jealousy, it is self-respect. Thus my room is done out with all the care a young girl in love bestows on her person and with the precision of an old maid. My dressing-room is no chaos of litter, on the contrary it makes a charming boudoir. My keen eye has foreseen all contingencies. At whatever hour the Lord and Master enters he will find nothing to distress, surprise or shock him. Flowers, scents, and everything that can please the eye. I get up in the early dawn while he is still sleeping, and, without disturbing him, pass into the dressing-room where, profiting by my mother's experience, I remove the traces of sleep by bathing in cold water. For during sleep the skin, being less active, does not perform its functions adequately. It becomes warm and covered with a sort of mist or atmosphere of sticky matter, visible to the eye. From a sponge-bath a woman issues ten years younger, and this, perhaps, is the interpretation of the myth of Venus rising from the sea. So the cold water restores to me the saucy charm of dawn, and having combed and scented my hair, and made a most fastidious toilette I glide back, snake-like, in order that my Master may find me dainty as a spring morning at his wakening. He is charmed with this freshness, as of a newly opened flower, without having the least idea how it is produced. The regular toilette of the day is a matter for my maid, and this takes place later in a larger room set aside for the purpose. As you may suppose there is also a toilette for going to bed. Three times a day, you see, or it may be four, do I array myself for the delight of my husband, which, again, dear one, is suggestive of certain ancient myths. But our work is not all-play. We make a great deal of interest in our flowers, in the beauties of the hot-house and in our trees. We give ourselves in all seriousness to horticulture, and embouzum the chalet and flowers of which we are passionately fond. Our lawns are always green, our shrubberies as well-tended as those of a millionaire. And nothing, I assure you, can match the beauty of our walled garden. We are regular gluttons over our fruit, and watch with tender interest our Montreal trees, our laden trellises, and pyramidal pear trees. But lest these rural pursuits should fail to satisfy my beloved's mind, I have advised him to finish, in the quiet of this retreat, some plays which were begun in his starvation days, and which are really very fine. This is the only kind of literary work which can be done in odd moments, for it requires long intervals of reflection, and does not demand the elaborate pruning of style. One can't make a task work of dialogue, there must be biting touches, summings up and flashes of wit, which are the blossoms of the mind, and come rather by inspiration than reflection. This sort of intellectual sport is very much in my line. I assist Gaston in his work, and in this way manage to accompany him even in the boldest flights of his imagination. Do you see now how it is that my winter is an easy time, that never once since we were married have we had to reprimand any of them? When questioned about us they have had wit enough to draw on their imaginations, and have given us out as the companion and secretary of a lady and gentleman supposed to be travelling. They never go out without asking permission, which they know will not be refused. They are contented to and see plainly that it will be their own fault if there is a change for our fruits and vegetables. The dairy-maid does the same with the milk, the cream, and the fresh butter, on condition that the best of the produce is reserved for us. They are well pleased with their profits, and we are delighted with an abundance which no money and no ingenuity can procure in that terrible Paris, where it costs a hundred francs to produce a single fine peach. All this is not without its meaning, my dear. I wish to fill the place of society to my husband. Now he is amusing, and therefore his solitude must not be allowed to pawl on him. I believed myself jealous in the old days when I merely allowed myself to be loved. Now I know real jealousy, the jealousy of the lover. A single indifferent glance unnerves me. From time to time I say to myself, suppose he ceased to love me, and a shudder goes through me. I tremble before him, as the Christian before his God. Alas, Rene, I am still without a child. The time will surely come, it must come, when our hermitage will need a father's and a mother's care to brighten it, when we shall both pine to see the little frocks and pelises, the brown or golden heads leaping, running through our shrubberies and flowery paths.  The thought of your lovely children goes through me like a knife. My life has grown narrower, while and shed its rays afar. The passion of love is essentially selfish, while motherhood widens the circle of our feelings. How well I felt this difference when I read your kind tender letter. To see you thus living in three hearts roused my envy. Yes, you are happy, you have had wisdom to obey the laws of social life, whilst I stand outside, an alien. Children, dear and loving children, can alone console a woman for the loss of her beauty. I shall soon be thirty, and at that age the dirge within begins. What though I am still beautiful, the limits of my woman's reign are none the less in sight. When they are reached, what then? I shall be forty before he is, I shall be old while he is still young. When this thought goes to my heart I lie at his feet for an hour at a time, making him swear to tell me instantly, if ever he feels his love diminishing. When he is a child, he swears as though the mere suggestion were an absurdity, and he is so beautiful that, Rene, you understand, I believe him. Good-bye, sweet one, shall we ever again let years pass without writing? Happiness is a monotonous theme, and that is perhaps the reason why, to souls who love, Dante appears even greater in the Paradiso than in the Inferno. I am not Dante, I am only your friend, and I don't want to bore you in sight, for in your children you have an ever-growing, ever-varying source of happiness, while mine no more of this. A thousand loves. Letters of two brides by Henri de Balzac. Letters 53 Madame de Lesterade to Madame Gaston. My dear Louise, I have read and re-read your letter, and the more deeply I enter into its spirit, the clearer does it become to me that it is the letter, not of a woman, but of a child. You are the same old Louise, and you forget what I used to repeat over and over again to you, that the passion of love again has only been purloined by civilization. So fleeting is its character that the resources of society are powerless to modify its primitive condition, and it becomes the effort of all noble minds to make a man of the infant cupid. But, as you yourself admit, such love ceases to be natural. Society, my dear, abhors sterility, but substituting a lasting sentiment for the mere passing frenzy of nature, it has succeeded in creating that greatest of all family, which is the enduring basis of all organized society. To the accomplishment of this end it has sacrificed the individual, man as well as woman, for we must not shut our eyes to the fact that a married man devotes his energy, his power, and all his possession to his wife. Is it not she who reaps the benefit of all his care? For whom, if not for her, are the luxury and wealth, the position and distinction, the comfort and the gaiety of the home. Once again you have taken the wrong turning in life. To be adored is a young girl's dream, which may survive a few spring-times. It cannot be that of the mature woman, the wife and mother. To a woman's vanity it is perhaps enough to know that she can command adoration if she likes. If you would live the life of a wife and mother, return I beg of you to Paris. Let me repeat my warning. It is not misfortune which you have to dread as others do, it is happiness. My child, it is the simple things of life, bread, air, silence, of which we do not tire. They have no frequency which can create distaste. It is highly-flavored dishes which irritate the palate, and in the end exhausted. Were it possible that I should today be loved by a man for whom I could conceive a passion, such as yours for Gaston, I would still cling to the duties and the children who are so dear to me. To a woman's heart the feelings of a life, fruitful and inexhaustible things of life. I can recall the day, now nearly fourteen years ago, when I embarked on a life of self-sacrifice with the despair of a shipwrecked mariner clinging to the mast of his vessel. Now, as I invoke the memory of past years, I feel that I would make the same choice again. No other guiding principle is so safe or leads to such rich reward. The spectacle of your life, which, for all the romance and poetry with which you still remains based on nothing but a ruthless selfishness, has helped to strengthen my convictions. This is the last time I shall speak to you in this way, but I could not refrain from once more pleading with you when I found out that your happiness had been proof against the most searching of all trials. And one more point I must urge on you, suggested by my meditations on your retirement. Life, whether of the body or the heart, consists in certain balanced interduced into the working of this routine, gives rise either to pain or to pleasure, both of which are a mere fever of the soul, bound to be fugitive because nature is not so framed as to support it long. But to make of life one long excess is surely to choose sickness for one's portion. You are sick because you maintain at the temperature of passion a feeling which marriage ought to convert into a steadying, purifying influence. Yes, my sweet, I see it clearly now. The glory at home consists in this very calm, this intimacy, this sharing alike of good and evil which the vulgar ridicule. How noble was the reply of the Duchess de Sully, the wife of the great Sully, to someone who remarked that her husband for all his grave exterior did not scruple to keep a mistress. What of that, she said, I represent the honour of the house and should decline to play the part of a courtesan there. But you, Louise, who are naturally more passionate than tender, bless the wife and the mistress. With the soul of a heloise and the passions of a Saint Teresa, you slip the leash on all your impulses so long as they are sanctioned by law. In a word, you degrade the marriage right. Surely the tables are turned. The reproaches you once heaped on me for immorally, as you said, seizing the means of happiness from the very outset of my wedded life, might be directed against yourself for grasping at everything which may serve your passion. What, must nature and society alike be in bondage to your caprice? You are the old Louise. You have never acquired the qualities which ought to be a woman's. Self-willed and unreasonable as a girl, you introduce with all into your love the keenest and most mercenary of calculations. Are you sure that, after all, the price you ask for your toilets is not too high? All these precautions are, to my mind, very suggestive of mistrust. Oh, dear Louise, if only you knew the sweetness of a mother's efforts to discipline herself from kindness and gentleness to all about her. My proud, self-sufficing temper gradually dissolved into a soft melancholy, which in turn has been swallowed up by those delights of motherhood which have been its reward. If the early hours were toilsome, the evening will be tranquil and clear. My dread is lest the day of your life should take the opposite course. When I read your letter to a close, I prayed God to send you among us for a day that you might see what family life really is, and learn the nature of those joys which are lasting and sweeter than tongue can tell, because they are genuine, simple, and natural. But alas, what chance have I with the best of arguments, against a fallacy which makes you happy? As I write these words, my eyes fill with tears. I had felt so sure that some months of honeymoon would provide us her fight and restore you to reason. But I see that there is no limit to your appetite, and that, having killed a man who loved you, you will not cease till you have killed love itself. Farewell, dear misguided friend. I am in despair that the letter which I hoped might reconcile you to society by its picture of my happiness, should have brought forth only a peon of selfishness. Yes, your love is selfish. You love Gaston far less for himself than for what he is to you. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This reading by Kara Schellenberg. Letters of Two Brides by Henri de Balzac Letter 54 Madame Gaston to the Comtesse de la Strade May 20th Rene, calamity has come. No, that is no word for her. No, that is no word for it.  You know what that means. Calamity for me is doubt. Certainty would be death. The day before yesterday when I had finished my first toilette I looked everywhere for Gaston to take a little turn with me before lunch but in vain. I went to the stable, and there I saw his mare all in a lather while the groom was removing the foam with a knife before rubbing her down. Who in the world has put Fidelta in such a state? I asked. Master replied the lad. I saw the mud of Paris on the mare's legs, for a country mud is quite different, and at once it flashed through me. He has been to Paris. This thought raised a swarm of others in my heart and it seemed as though all the life in my body rushed there to go to Paris without telling me at the hour when I leave him alone to hasten there and back at such speed as to distress Fidelta. Suspicion clutched me in its iron grip till I could hardly breathe. I walked aside a few steps to a seat where I tried to recover my self-command. Here Gaston found me apparently pale and fluttered for he immediately exclaimed what is wrong in a tone of such alarm that I rose and took his arm. But my muscles refused to move and I was forced to sit down again. Then he took me in his arms and carried me to the parlor close by where the frightened servants pressed after us till Gaston motioned them away. Once left to ourselves I refused to speak but was able to reach my room where I shut myself in to weep my fill. Gaston remained something like two hours at my door listening to my sobs and questioning with angelic patience his poor darling who made no response. At last I told him that I would see him when my eyes were less red and my voice was steady again.  Nothing, I said. I saw the mud of Paris on Fidelta's trembling legs it seemed strange that you should go there without telling me but, of course, you are free. I shall punish you for such wicked thoughts by not giving any explanation till to-morrow he replied. Look at me, I said. My eyes met his deep answered to deep. No, not a trace of the cloud of disloyalty rising from the soul must dim the clearness of the eye. I feigned satisfaction though really unconvinced. It is not women only who can lie and dissemble. The whole of the day we spent together ever and again, as I looked at him I realized how fast my heartstrings were bound to him how I trembled and fluttered within when, after a moment's absence he reappeared. I live in him, not in myself. My cruel sufferings gave the lie to your unkind letter. Did I ever feel my life thus bound up in the noble Spaniard who adored me as I adore this heartless boy?  But the next thing would have been to lame Gaston or imprison him in the cottage. Wild thoughts like these filled my brain you see how near I was to madness if love be not the cage what power on earth can hold back a man who wants to be free. I asked him point blank. Do I bore you? What needless torture you give yourself, was his reply while he looked at me with tender pitying eyes. Never have I loved you so deeply. If that is true, my beloved let me self at Elta, I answered. Sell her by all means. The reply crushed me. Was it not a covert taunt at my wealth and his own nothingness in the house? This may never have occurred to him but I thought it had and once more I left him. It was night and I would go to bed. Oh, Rene, to be alone with a harrowing thought drives one to thoughts of death. These charming gardens, the starry night, the cool air laden with incense from our wealth of flowers, our valley, our hills all seemed to me gloomy, black, and desolate. It was as though I lay at the foot of a precipice surrounded by serpents and poisonous plants and saw no god in the sky. Such a night ages a woman.  Don't sell her, I love her. Does she not carry you? But he was not deceived. My tone betrayed the storm of feeling which I strove to conceal.  What petty creatures women are, I exclaimed. No, you love me, that is all, he said, pressing me to his heart. Go to Paris without me, I said, and this time I made him understand that my suspicions were laid aside. He went. I thought he would have stayed. I won't attempt to tell you what I found a second self within quite strange to me. A crisis like this has, for the woman who loves, a tragic solemnity that baffles words. The whole of life rises before you then, and you search in vain for any horizon to it. The various trifle is big with meaning. A glance contains a volume, icicles drift on uttered words, and the death sentence is read in a movement of the lips. I thought he would have paid me had I not been magnanimous. I climbed to the top of the chalet and my eyes followed him on the road. Ah, my dear Renee, he vanished from my sight with an appalling swiftness. How keen he is to go, was the thought that sprang of itself. Once more alone I fell back into the hell of possibilities the maelstrom of mistrust. There were moments when I would have welcomed any certainty, even the worst, from the torture of suspense. Suspense is a duel carried on in the heart and we give no quarter to ourselves. I paced up and down the walks. I returned to the house, only to tear out again like a madwoman. Gaston, who left at seven o'clock, did not return till eleven. Now, as it only takes half an hour to reach Paris through the park of St. Cloud and the Bois de Boulogne, it is plain that he must have spent three hours in town. He came back radiant, with a whip in his hand, for me an India rubber whip with a gold handle. For a fortnight I had been without a whip, my old one being worn and broken. Was it for this you tortured me, I said, as I admired the workmanship of this beautiful ornament, which contains a little scent-box at one end. Then it flashed on me that the present was a fresh artifice. Nevertheless I threw myself at once on his neck, not without reproaching him gently for having caused me so much pain for the sake of a trifle. He was greatly pleased with his ingenuity, his eyes and his whole bearing plainly showed the restrained triumph of the successful plotter, for there is a radiance of the soul, which is reflected in every feature and turn of the body. While still examining the beauties of this work of art, I asked him at a moment when we happened to be looking at each other in the face. Who is the artist? Of mine. Ah! I see it has been mounted by Verdière, and I read the name of the shop printed on the handle.  He blushed, and I made much of him as a reward for the shame he felt in deceiving me. I pretended to notice nothing, and he may well have thought the incident was over. May 25. The next morning I was in my riding-habit by six o'clock, and landed at Verdière's, where several whips of the same pattern were shown to me. One of the men serving recognized mine when I pointed it out to him. We sold that yesterday to a young gentleman, he said, and from the description I gave him of my traitor Gaston not a doubt was left of his identity. I will spare you the palpitations which rent my heart during that journey to Paris and the little scene there which marked the turning point of my life. By half-seven I was home again, and Gaston found me fresh and blooming in my morning dress sauntering about with a make-believe nonchalance. I felt confident that old Philippe, who had been taken into my confidence, would not have betrayed my absence. Gaston, I said, as we walked by the side of the lake. You cannot blind me to the difference between a work of art inspired by friendship and something which has been cast in a mould. My dear, I went on. This is not a whip. It is a screen behind which you are hiding something from me. Thereupon I gave myself the gratification of watching his hopeless entanglement in the coverts and labyrinths of deceit and the desperate efforts he made to find some wall he might scale and thus escape. In vain he had perforce to remain upon the field face-to-face with an adversary who had no choice but to find his way. But it was too late. The fatal mistake against which my mother had tried to warn me was made. My jealousy exposed in all its nakedness had led to war and all its stratagems between Gaston and myself. Jealousy, dear, has neither sense nor decency. I made up my mind now to suffer in silence but to keep my eyes open until my doubts were resolved one way or another. Then I would either break with Gaston or bow to my misfortune. No middle course is possible for a woman who respects herself. What can he be concealing for a secret there is and the secret has to do with a woman? Is it some youthful escapade for which he still blushes? But if so, what? The word what is written in letters of fire on all I see. I read it in the glassy water in the lake, in the shrubbery, in the clouds, on the ceilings, at table, in the flowers of the carpets. A voice cries to me, what in my sleep? Dating from the morning of my discovery a cruel interest has sprung into our lives and I have become familiar with the bitterest thought that can corrode the heart, the thought of treachery in him one loves.  I, to whom love had appeared only in the form of devoutest worship. So you wished to know the gloomy torture chamber of pain, I said to myself. Good, the spirits of evil have heard your prayer.  May 30. Since that fatal day Gaston no longer works with the careless ease of the wealthy artist whose work is merely pastime. He sets himself tasks like a professional writer. Four hours a day he devotes to finishing his two plays. He wants money. A voice within whispered the thought but why, he spends next to nothing we have absolutely no secrets from each other. There is not a corner of his study which my eyes and my fingers may not explore. His yearly expenditure does not amount to two thousand francs and I know that he has thirty thousand. I can hardly say laid by but scattered loose in a drawer. You can guess what is coming. At midnight, while he was sleeping I went to see if the money was still there. An icy shiver ran through me. The drawer was empty. That same week I discovered that he went to sevre to fetch his letters and these letters he must tear up immediately for though I am a very figaro in contrivances I have never yet seen a trace of one. Alas, my sweet, despite the fine promises and vows by which I bound myself after the scene of the whip and impulse which I can only call madness drove me to follow him in one of his rapid rides to the post office. Castan was appalled to be thus discovered on horseback paying the postage of a letter which he held in his hand. He looked fixedly at me and then put spurs to Fidelta. The pace was so hard that I felt shaken to bits when I reached the lodge gate though my mental agony was such at the time that it might well have dulled the consciousness of bodily pain. Arrived at the gate, Castan said nothing. He rang the bell and waited without a word. I was more dead than alive. I might be mistaken or I might not, but in neither case was it fitting for Armand-Louis Marie de Chelliot to play the spy. I had sunk to the level of the gutter by the side of courtesans, opera dancers, mere creatures of instinct. Even the vulgar shop girl or humble seamstress might look down on me. What a moment! At last the door opened. He handed his horse to the groom and I also dismounted, but into his arms which were stretched out to receive me. I threw my skirt over my left arm, gave him my right, and we walked on, still in silence. The few steps we thus took might be reckoned to me for a hundred years of purgatory. A swarm of thoughts beset me as I walked, now seeming to take visible form in tongues of fire before my eyes, now assailing my mind, each with its own poisoned dart. When the groom and the horses were far away I stopped Gaston and looking him in the face said, as I pointed, with a gesture that you should have seen, to the fatal letter still in his right hand. May I read it? He gave it to me. I opened it and found a letter from Nathan, the dramatic author informing Gaston that a play of his had been accepted, learned, rehearsed and would be produced the following Saturday. He also enclosed a box-ticket. Though for me this was the opening of Heaven's gates to the martyr, yet the fiend would not leave me in peace but he kept crying, where are the thirty thousand francs? It was a question which self-respect, dignity, all my old self, in fact, prevented me from uttering. If my thought became speech I might as well throw myself into the lake at once, and yet to keep the words down. Dear friend, was not this a trial passing the strength of woman?  To Paris, he said, but why? I only wanted to find out if I had any gift to taste the flowing bowl of success. Nothing would be easier than for me to ransack the drawer some time while he is working and pretend great surprise at finding the money gone. But that would be going half way to meet the answer. Oh, my friend, so and so, was hard up, etc., which a man of Gaston's quick wit would not have far to seek. The moral, my dear, is that the brilliant success of this play, which all Paris is crowding to see, is due to us, though the whole credit goes to Nathan. I am represented by one of the two stars in the legend Star Star. I saw the first night from the depths of one of the stage-boxes. July 1st. Gaston's work and his visits to Paris shall continue. He is preparing new plays partly because he wants a pretext for going to Paris, partly in order to make money. Three plays have been accepted and two more are commissioned. Oh, my dear, I am lost all his darkness around me. I would set fire to the house in a moment of light. What does it all mean? Is he ashamed of taking money from me? He is too high-minded for so trumpery a matter to weigh with him. Besides, scruples of the kind could only be the outcome of some love affair. A man would take anything from his wife, but from the woman he has ceased to care for, or is thinking of deserting it is different. If he needs such large sums it must be to spend them on a woman. For himself why should he hesitate our savings amount to one hundred thousand francs? In short, my sweetheart, I have explored a whole continent of possibilities, and after carefully weighing all the evidence am convinced I have a rival. I am deserted, for whom at all costs I must see the unknown. July 10th Light has come, and it is all over with me. Yes, Renée, at the age of thirty, in the perfection of my beauty, with all the resources of a ready wit and the seductive charms of dress at my command, I am betrayed, and for whom a large-boned English woman with big feet and thick waist, a regular British cow there is no longer room for doubt I will tell you the history of the last few days. Worn out with suspicions which were fed by Gaston's guilty silence for if he had helped a friend why keep it a secret from me? His insatiable desire for money and his frequent journeys to Paris, jealous too of the work from which he seemed unable to tear himself, I at last made up my mind to take certain steps of such a degrading nature that I cannot tell you about them. Suffice it to say that three days ago I ascertained that Gaston, when in Paris, visits a house in the roue de la vie-levec, where he guards his mistress with jealous mystery, unexampled in Paris. The quarter was surly and I could get little out of him but that little was enough to put an end to any lingering hope and with hope to life. On this point my mind was resolved and I only waited to learn the whole truth first. With this object I went to Paris and took rooms in a house exactly opposite the one which Gaston visits. Thence I saw him with my own eyes enter the courtyard on horseback. Too soon a ghastly fact forced itself on me. An English woman, who seems to me about thirty-six, is known as Madame Gaston. This discovery was my death-blow. I saw him next walking in the tuleries with a couple of children. Oh, my dear, two children, the living images of Gaston.  Here is the key to the whole mystery. The woman herself might be a Greek statue stepped down from some monument, cold and white as marble she moves sedately with a mother's pride. She is undeniably beautiful but heavy as a man of war. There is no breeding or distinction about her, nothing of the English lady. Probably she is a farmer's daughter from some wretched and remote country village, or it may be the eleventh child of some poor clergyman. I reached home after a miserable journey during which all sorts of fiendish thoughts had me at their mercy with hardly any life left in me. Was she married? Did he know her before our marriage? Had she been deserted by some rich man whose mistress she was and thus thrown back upon Gaston's hands? Conjectures without end flitted through my brain as though conjecture were needed in the presence of the children. The next day I returned to Paris and by a free use of my purse Gaston was legally married. His reply to my question took the form. Yes, miss. July 15th My dear, my love for Gaston is stronger than ever since that morning and he has every appearance of being still more deeply in love. He is so young, a score of times it has been on my lips when we rise in the morning to say Then you love me better than the lady of the rude et la villevec and dare not explain to myself why the words are checked on my tongue. Are you very fond of children? I asked. Oh yes, was his reply, but children will come. What makes you think so? I have consulted the best doctors and they agree in advising me to travel for a couple of months. Gaston, I said, if love in absence had been possible for me, do you suppose I should ever have left the convent? And laughed, but as for me, dear, the word travel pierced my heart. Rather, far rather, what I leap from the top of the house than be rolled down the staircase step by step. Farewell, my sweetheart, I have arranged for my death to be easy and without horrors, but certain. I made my will yesterday. You can come to me now. The prohibition is removed. Come then and receive my last farewell. I will not die by inches. My life shall bear the impress of dignity and grace. Goodbye, dear sister Sol, whose affection has never wavered nor grown weary, but has been the constant tender moonlight of my soul. If the intensity of passion has not been ours, at least we have been spared its venomous bitterness. How rightly you have judged of life! Farewell. END OF LETTER 54 The Contest de l'Esterade, 2 Mme Gaston, July 16th. My dear Louise, I send this letter by an express before hastening to the chalet myself. Take courage! Your last letter seemed to me so frantic that I thought myself justified under the circumstances in confiding all to Louis. It was a question of saving you from yourself. If the means we have employed have been, like yours, repulsive, yet the result is so satisfactory that I am certain you will approve. I went so far as to set the police to work, but the whole thing remains a secret between the prefect, ourselves, and you. In one word Gaston is a jewel. But here are the facts. His brother Louis Gaston died at Calcutta while in the service of a mercantile company, when he was on the very point of returning to France a rich, prosperous, married man having received a very large fortune with his wife, who was the widow of an English merchant. For ten years he had worked hard that he might be able to send home enough to support his brother, to whom he was devotedly attached, from whom his letters generously concealed all his trials and disappointments. Then came the failure of the great Hallmer house. The widow was ruined, and the sudden shock affected Louis Gaston's brain. He had no mental energy left to resist the disease which attacked him, and he died in Bengal, whether he had gone to try and realize the remnants of his wife's property. The dear good fellow had deposited with a banker a first sum of 300,000 francs, which was to go to his brother. But the banker was involved in the Hallmer crash, and thus their last resource failed them. Louis's widow, the handsome woman whom you took for your rival, arrived in Paris with two children, your nephews, and an empty purse, her mother's jewels having barely suffice to pay for bringing them over. The instructions which Louis Gaston had given the banker for sending the money to his brother, enabled the widow to find your husband's former home. As Gaston had disappeared without leaving any address, Madame Louis Gaston was directed to Dartès, the only person who could give any information about him. Dartès was the more ready to believe the young woman's pressing needs because Louis Gaston, at the time of his marriage four years before, had written to make inquiries about his brother from the famous author, whom he knew to be one of his friends. The captain had consulted Dartès as to the best means of getting the money safely transferred to Marie, and Dartès had replied, telling him that Gaston was now a rich man from De Vacumère. The personal beauty, which was the mother's rich heritage to her sons, had saved them both, one in India, the other in Paris, from destitution. A touching story, is it not? Dartès naturally wrote after a time to tell your husband of the condition of his sister-in-law and her children, informing him at the same time of the generous intentions of the Indian Gaston towards his Paris brother, which an unhappy chance had frustrated. Gaston, as you may imagine, hurried off to Paris. Here is the first ride accounted for. During the last five years he had saved fifty thousand francs out of the income you forced him to accept. In this sum he invested in the public funds under the names of his two nephews, securing them each in this way an income of twelve hundred francs. Next he furnished his sister-in-law's rooms and promised her a quarterly allowance of three thousand francs. Here you see the meaning of his dramatic labours and the pleasure caused him Madame Gaston, therefore, is no rival of yours and has every right to your name. A man of Gaston's sensitive delicacy was bound to keep the affair secret from you, knowing as he did your generous nature. Nor does he look on what you give him as his own. Dartès read me the letter he had from your husband, asking him to be one of the witnesses at his marriage. Gaston in this declares that his happiness would have been perfect but for one drawback of his poverty and indebtedness to you. A virgin soul is at the mercy of such scruples. Either they make themselves felt or they do not, and when they do it is easy to imagine the conflict of feeling and embarrassment to which they give rise. Nothing is more natural than Gaston's wish to provide in secret a suitable maintenance for the woman who is his brother's widow and who herself had set aside one hundred thousand francs for him from her own fortune. She is a handsome woman, warm-hearted and extremely well-bred but not clever. She is a mother, and you may be sure I lost my heart to her at first sight when I found her with one child in her arms and the other dressed like a little lord. The children first is written in every detail of her house. Far from being angry therefore with your beloved husband you should find in all this a fresh reason for loving him. I have met him and think him the most delightful young fellow in Paris. Yes, dear child, when I saw him I had no difficulty in understanding that a woman might lose her heart about him. His soul is mirrored in his countenance. If I were you I should settle the widow and her children at the chalet in a pretty little cottage which you could have built for them and adopt the boys. Be at peace then, dear soul, and plan this little surprise in your turn for Gaston. End of Letter 55 Letter 56 Ah, my dear friend, what can I say in answer except the cruel it is too late of that fool Lafayette to his royal master?  My own hand has dealt the death blow. Alas, have I not been a mere will of the wisp whose twinkling spark was fated to perish before it reached a flame? My eyes reign torrents of tears, and yet they must not fall when I am with him. I fly to him and he seeks me. My despair is all within. This torture Dante forgot to place in his inferno. Come to see me die. End of Letter 56 Read by Kara Schellenberg on March 2nd, 2007 in Oceanside, California. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Michelle Crandall Fremont, California, September 2007 Letters of Two Brides by Honoré de Balzac Letter 57 The Contest de l'Esterade to the Conte de l'Esterade The Chalet, August 7th My love, take the children away to Provence without me. I remain with Louise, who has only a few days yet to live. I cannot leave either her or her husband, for whose reason I fear. You know the Scrap of Letter which sent me flying to Ville d'Evray, picking up the doctors on my way. Since then I have not left my darling friend, and it has been impossible to write to you, for I have sat up every night for a fortnight. When I arrived I found her with Gaston in full dress, beautiful, laughing, happy. It was a heroic falsehood. They were like two lovely children, together in their restored confidence. For a moment I was deceived like Gaston by the effrontery, but Louise pressed my hand, whispering, he must not know, I am dying. An icy chill fell over me as I felt her burning hand and saw the red spots on her cheeks. I congratulated myself on my prudence in leaving the doctors in the wood till they should be sent for. Leave us for a little while, she said to Gaston. Two women who have not met for five years have plenty of secrets to talk over, and Rene I have no doubt, has things to confide in me. Directly we were alone. She flung herself into my arms, unable longer to restrain her tears. Tell me about it, I said. I have brought with me, in case of need, the best surgeon and the best physician in the hospital, and beyond Sean as well. There are four altogether. Ah! she cried, have them in at once if they can save me, if there is still time. The passion which hurried me to death now cries for life.  I have, in a few days, brought myself to the last stage of consumption. But how? I got myself into a profuse perspiration in the night, and then ran out and lay down by the side of the lake in the dew. Gaston thinks I have a cold, and I am dying. Send him to Paris. I will fetch the doctors myself, I said, as I rushed out wildly to the spot where I had left them. Alas, my love, after the consultation was over, not one of the doctors gave me the least hope.  The dear child's constitution has wonderfully helped the success of her plan. It seems she has a predisposition to this complaint, and though in the ordinary course she might have lived for a long time, a few days folly has made the case desperate. I cannot tell you what I felt on hearing this sentence, based on such clear explanations. You know that I have lived in Louise as much as in my own life. I was simply crushed and could not stir to escort to the door these harbingers of evil. I don't know how long I remain lost in bitter thoughts, the tears running down my cheeks when I was roused from my stupor by the words. So there is no hope for me in that voice. It was Louise with her hand on my shoulder.  Stay with me till the end. I won't have doleful faces around me. Above all, I must keep the truth from him. I know that I have the strength to do it.  For myself I have no regrets. I am dying as I wish to die, still young and beautiful, in the light of my womanhood. As for him, I can see very well now that I should have made his life miserable. Passion has me in its grips, like a struggling fawn impatient of the toils. My groundless jealousy has already wounded him sorely. When the day came that my suspicions met only in difference, which in the long run is the rightful me of all jealousy. Well, that would have been my death. I have had my share of life.  Thus for him, as well as for me, the close is a happy one. But between us, dear Renee, it is different. You lose a loving sister, and that is a loss which nothing can repair. You alone here have the right to mourn my death. After a long pause during which I could only see her through a mist the moral of my death is a cruel one. My dear doctor in petticoats was right. Marriage cannot rest upon passion as its foundation, nor even upon love. How fine and noble is your life! Keeping always to the one safe road, you give your husband an ever-growing affection, while the passionate eagerness with which I threw myself into wedded life was bound in nature to diminish. Twice have I gone astray, and twice his death stretched forth his bony hand to strike my happiness. The first time he brought me of the noblest and most devoted of men. Now it is my turn.  Yet I would not complain. Have I not known in turn two men, each the very pattern of nobility, one in mind, the other in outward form? In Philippe the soul dominated and transformed the body. In Gaston one could not say which was supreme, heart, mind, or grace of form. I die adored. What more could I wish for? Time, perhaps, in which to draw near the God of whom I may have too little thought. My spirit will take its flight towards him, full of love, and with the prayer that someday, in the world above, he will unite me once more to the two, who made a heaven of my life below. Without them paradise would be a desert to me. To others my example would be fatal, for mine was no common lot. To meet a Philippe or a Gaston is more than mortals can expect, and therefore the doctrine of society in regard to marriage accords with the natural law. Woman is weak, and in marrying she ought to make an entire sacrifice of her will to the man who, in return, should lay his selfishness at her feet. The stir which women of late years have created by their whining and in subordination is ridiculous, and only shows how well we deserve the epithet of children bestowed by philosophers on our sex. She continued talking less in the gentle voice you know so well, uttering the gravest truths in the prettiest manner, until Gaston entered, bringing with him his sister-in-law, the two children, and the English nurse, whom, at Louise's request, he had been defetched from Paris. Here are the pretty instruments of my torture, she said, as her nephews approached. Was not the mistake excusable? What a wonderful likeness to their uncle. She was most friendly to Madame Gaston, the elder, and begged that she would look upon the chalet as her home. In short, she played the hostess to her in her best de Chaleu manner, in which no one can rival her. I wrote it once to the Duke in Duchess de Chaleu, the Duke de Retour, and the Duke de Lennoncourt Giveret, as well as to Madeleine. It was time. Next day, Louise, worn out with so much exertion, was unable to go out. Indeed, she only got up for dinner. In the course of the evening, Madeleine de Lennoncourt, her two brothers, and her mother arrived. The coolness which Louise's second marriage had caused between herself and her family disappeared. Every day since that evening, Louise's father and both her brothers have ridden over in the morning, and the two Duchesses spend all their evenings at the chalet. Death unites as well as separates. It silences all, paltry feeling. Louise is perfection in her charm, her grace, her good sense, and her tenderness. She has retained to the last that perfect tact, for which she has been so famous. And she lavishes on us the treasures of her brilliant mind, which made her one of the queens of Paris. I should like to look well, even in my coffin, she said with her matchless smile, as she lay down on the bed where she was to linger for a fortnight.  Medicines, ointments, the whole apparatus of nursing is carefully concealed. Pretty, she said to the severest priest who came to confess her. We gloated over her like misers. All this anxiety and the terrible truths which dawned on him have prepared Gaston for the worst.  It would not surprise me to see him follow his wife in the natural course. Yesterday, as we were walking around the lake, he said to me, I must be a father to those two children, and he pointed to his sister-in-law taking the boys for a walk. But though I shall do nothing to hasten my end, I want your promise that you will be a second mother to them, and will persuade your husband to accept the office of guardian, which I shall depute to him in conjunction with my sister-in-law. He said this quite simply, like a man who knows he is not long for this world. He has smiles on his face to meet Louise's, and it is only I whom he does not deceive. He is a mate for her in her courage. Louise has expressed a wish to see her godson, but I am not sorry he should be in Provence. She might want to remember him generously, and I should be in a great difficulty. Goodbye, my love. August 25, her birthday. Yesterday evening, Louise was delirious for a short time, but her delirium was the prettiest babbling, which shows that even the madness of gifted people is not that of fools or nobodies. In a mere thread of a voice she sang some Italian heirs from Ipuretani, La Sonambule oise, while we stood around the bed in silence. Not one of us, not even the Duke de Rator, had dry eyes, so clear was it to us all that her soul was in this fashion passing from us. She could no longer see us, yet she was there still in the charm of the faint melody, with its sweetness not of this earth. During the night the death agony began. It is now seven in the morning that Louise raised her from bed. Some flicker of strength revived. She wished to sit by her window and asked for Gaston's hand, and then my love, the sweetest spirit whom we shall ever see on this earth departed, leaving us the empty shell. The last sacrament had been administered the evening before, unknown to Gaston, who was taking a snatch of sleep during this agonizing ceremony, and after she was removed to the window she asked me to read to her while she was thus face to face with a lovely scene, which was her handiwork. She repeated the words after me to herself, and pressed the hands of her husband, who knelt on the other side of her chair. August 26th My heart is broken. I have just seen her in her winding sheet. Her face is quite pale now with purple shadows.  The end. End of Letter 57 and End of Letters of Two Brides by Honolulu De Balzac


So, this is actually part of my research at the university in Amsterdam, my supervisor is Arjan van Ooyen, he's from Palt, and how he went further. So actually, before starting, I'd like you to see this video, try to identify some patterns or changes in there. Well, maybe what you can see is that during the first four bumps of activity, the inter-bombs interval is quite constant, and afterwards it changed, so it was like enlarged. So something similar happens here, for example. If you look, for example, here at the frontal zone of both humans and rats, then you can see that there is activity going on over there. If you represent here the voltage trace, and then you compute the wave electron form associated to that, representing warm colors, high activity and cold colors, low activity, you see here these two components, which are associated actually at different frequencies, but similar frequencies occur also in the rodent. So it suggests that maybe there are two different kinds of activity going on in the same region. This is synchronous activity. So what we know so far is that different networks are able to produce different kinds of synchronous activity, and it depends on the properties of the cells. If we look specifically, for example, at the prefrontal zone of the rats, layer 35 is able to oscillate at a higher frequency than layer six, but if you produce connections or you look at the connections between them, the frequencies can change. Similar dynamics can be also observed in the visual zones, comparing region, sorry, V1 and V2. But interestingly, if you look at, for example, at what happened here in this figure, this is region CA1 of the hippocampus and CA3. These regions oscillate at a higher frequency. Both are composed of excitatory inhibitor cells. The frequency here is higher than here, but by projecting connections from here, from CA3 to CA1, the frequency of the CA1 region goes down. So what it suggests is that if we actually have different rhythms, so we have two networks and we want to know how feedforward connectivity from one network is able to affect the activity in the other network. So we're going to talk from now on about two different networks. So this is our modeling approach. It was in neuron, such that we have two populations of cells. Let's say one is the source, the other is the target, but you can have one frequency lower than the other. They are non-correlated to each other. And the idea is that every network has 20 inhibitory cells and 80 excitatory cells. The cells are really abstract models, so they are conductance-based models, single compartments, including sodium, potassium, and leak currents, so that they are able to produce actually action potentials. And now that we have this structure of the cells, we connect them by using inhibitory GABA-A synapses and excitatory AMPA synapses. So what we want to know, actually, and the focus of this work is how should we connect these two networks, such that one, which is the source could be this or that, is able to impose the rhythm onto the other. So what we see is here the scheme. And to face this problem, we define here in a very systematic manner one exploration of the connectivity space, such that we define the connectivity class. And here you have the inhibitory and excitatory populations, the low-case letters for the slow network, the capital-case letters for the fast network. And then you want to modify the synaptic strength of that. But you don't have only that connection, you also have other connections there. So what we do is that we design one scheme of other connectivity situations in which we add and remove other connections without modifying the synaptic strength. So we are focusing on the strength of the main connection. So we did that by changing 10 different values, the strength of this connection, and then spanning across one range of three orders of magnitude. So it's not one linear scale. And you have in total these 32 possible schemes from the slow to the fast network. It remembers a feed-forward connection from the slow to the fast and from the fast to the slow. Now, what happens if we look at the activity in the excitatory population? Well, what you have is this picture. The inhibitory population is behaving quite similar. That's why we are just representing the excitatory one. In this situation, you have the Fourier spectrum, the wavelet transform, and here is the raster gram. So every time that one cell spikes, then you make one mark. So you can see here that this is quite stable. It's a very synchronous pattern in both situations. This is the slow network. That one is the fast network. But what happens if we connect from the slow to the fast? For example, this is an idea. So what you see is that the frequency, if you compare this row with this row, so at least by qualitatively looking first at this, you'll see one changing the frequency. The frequency is going up. But actually, if you look at the Fourier spectrum, this frequency corresponds to the first harmonic of this, when this is free. So we've made many experiments. We run 640 different cases. And three main cases is what I want to show you here. So in one case, if you connect the slow to the fast and you look at the activity at the fast, you see that in this case there is interspersed activity between the local rhythm and the external impulse rhythm. In other case, the only thing that can do is to influence the power of the oscillation in the target network, changing also the frequency. But what is interesting here is that if you, for example, connect now from the fast to the slow, and then you look at the activities in the slow network, you can observe that the frequency is not changing, but the power is quite fluctuating. Now, if we want to look at this in a systematic manner in all the simulations, what we did is that we first designed these schemes in which the red dots, which are quite small here, are representing only the location of the frequency at the base value and the first harmonic of this, in this case, the slow oscillation, which is the frequency of the source. But you can do that also for the fast. And then the blue points are representing the activity of the target network. So the size of these disks are saying how strong this oscillation is. You can do that for every connectivity class and every connectivity scheme, so you can analyze that. And at the end, you see one plethora of different kinds of patterns of activity. So in summary, what we can say is that when you get input from another network in this target, you can observe first changes in the frequency spectrum. On the other hand, you can cause the alternating occurrence of episodes of different frequencies and you can induce irregular fluctuations in the oscillation of the target network. So what we conclude is that these results suggest that the slow rather than the fast oscillation is more suitable to synchronize activity between cortical areas and combine separate representations into a whole, facilitating inter-area information transfer. Finally, I want to talk to my supervisors, my supporting project, and some colleagues at the lab. Thank you very much. So may I ask different oscillations when you talk about oscillations in C1 and 2 and 3? So can these different kinds of oscillations relate to the behaviors of these areas for hippocampus? Are they doing different kinds of memories, texts, or are they in a different phase for doing memory? Yeah, for example, in that situation, what we see is that there is synchronization between areas. What we actually want to face with this model is try to keep this property such that we observe that actually you are able to lock the activity of one network in one region to the other. We are able to reproduce this just by changing the connectivity. So that's what we want to first identify the mechanism and then look at different questions. Thank you.