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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1189 ***
+
+THE MESSAGE
+
+
+By Honore De Balzac
+
+
+
+Translated by Ellen Marriage
+
+
+
+To M. le Marquis Damaso Pareto
+
+
+
+
+THE MESSAGE
+
+
+I have always longed to tell a simple and true story, which should
+strike terror into two young lovers, and drive them to take refuge each
+in the other's heart, as two children cling together at the sight of a
+snake by a woodside. At the risk of spoiling my story and of being taken
+for a coxcomb, I state my intention at the outset.
+
+I myself played a part in this almost commonplace tragedy; so if it
+fails to interest you, the failure will be in part my own fault, in
+part owing to historical veracity. Plenty of things in real life are
+superlatively uninteresting; so that it is one-half of art to select
+from realities those which contain possibilities of poetry.
+
+In 1819 I was traveling from Paris to Moulins. The state of my finances
+obliged me to take an outside place. Englishmen, as you know, regard
+those airy perches on the top of the coach as the best seats; and for
+the first few miles I discovered abundance of excellent reasons for
+justifying the opinion of our neighbors. A young fellow, apparently in
+somewhat better circumstances, who came to take the seat beside me
+from preference, listened to my reasoning with inoffensive smiles. An
+approximate nearness of age, a similarity in ways of thinking, a common
+love of fresh air, and of the rich landscape scenery through which the
+coach was lumbering along,--these things, together with an indescribable
+magnetic something, drew us before long into one of those short-lived
+traveller's intimacies, in which we unbend with the more complacency
+because the intercourse is by its very nature transient, and makes no
+implicit demands upon the future.
+
+We had not come thirty leagues before we were talking of women and love.
+Then, with all the circumspection demanded in such matters, we proceeded
+naturally to the topic of our lady-loves. Young as we both were, we
+still admired "the woman of a certain age," that is to say, the woman
+between thirty-five and forty. Oh! any poet who should have listened to
+our talk, for heaven knows how many stages beyond Montargis, would have
+reaped a harvest of flaming epithet, rapturous description, and very
+tender confidences. Our bashful fears, our silent interjections, our
+blushes, as we met each other's eyes, were expressive with an eloquence,
+a boyish charm, which I have ceased to feel. One must remain young, no
+doubt, to understand youth.
+
+Well, we understood one another to admiration on all the essential
+points of passion. We had laid it down as an axiom at the very outset,
+that in theory and practice there was no such piece of driveling
+nonsense in this world as a certificate of birth; that plenty of women
+were younger at forty than many a girl of twenty; and, to come to the
+point, that a woman is no older than she looks.
+
+This theory set no limits to the age of love, so we struck out, in all
+good faith, into a boundless sea. At length, when we had portrayed our
+mistresses as young, charming, and devoted to us, women of rank, women
+of taste, intellectual and clever; when we had endowed them with
+little feet, a satin, nay, a delicately fragrant skin, then came the
+admission--on his part that Madame Such-an-one was thirty-eight years
+old, and on mine that I worshiped a woman of forty. Whereupon, as if
+released on either side from some kind of vague fear, our confidences
+came thick and fast, when we found that we were in the same
+confraternity of love. It was which of us should overtop the other in
+sentiment.
+
+One of us had traveled six hundred miles to see his mistress for an
+hour. The other, at the risk of being shot for a wolf, had prowled about
+her park to meet her one night. Out came all our follies in fact. If it
+is pleasant to remember past dangers, is it not at least as pleasant
+to recall past delights? We live through the joy a second time. We told
+each other everything, our perils, our great joys, our little pleasures,
+and even the humors of the situation. My friend's countess had lighted
+a cigar for him; mine made chocolate for me, and wrote to me every day
+when we did not meet; his lady had come to spend three days with him at
+the risk of ruin to her reputation; mine had done even better, or worse,
+if you will have it so. Our countesses, moreover, were adored by their
+husbands; these gentlemen were enslaved by the charm possessed by every
+woman who loves; and, with even supererogatory simplicity, afforded us
+that just sufficient spice of danger which increases pleasure. Ah! how
+quickly the wind swept away our talk and our happy laughter!
+
+When we reached Pouilly, I scanned my new friend with much interest, and
+truly, it was not difficult to imagine him the hero of a very serious
+love affair. Picture to yourselves a young man of middle height, but
+very well proportioned, a bright, expressive face, dark hair, blue eyes,
+moist lips, and white and even teeth. A certain not unbecoming pallor
+still overspread his delicately cut features, and there were faint dark
+circles about his eyes, as if he were recovering from an illness. Add,
+furthermore, that he had white and shapely hands, of which he was as
+careful as a pretty woman should be; add that he seemed to be very well
+informed, and was decidedly clever, and it should not be difficult for
+you to imagine that my traveling companion was more than worthy of a
+countess. Indeed, many a girl might have wished for such a husband, for
+he was a Vicomte with an income of twelve or fifteen thousand livres,
+"to say nothing of expectations."
+
+About a league out of Pouilly the coach was overturned. My
+luckless comrade, thinking to save himself, jumped to the edge of a
+newly-ploughed field, instead of following the fortunes of the vehicle
+and clinging tightly to the roof, as I did. He either miscalculated in
+some way, or he slipped; how it happened, I do not know, but the coach
+fell over upon him, and he was crushed under it.
+
+We carried him into a peasant's cottage, and there, amid the moans wrung
+from him by horrible sufferings, he contrived to give me a commission--a
+sacred task, in that it was laid upon me by a dying man's last wish.
+Poor boy, all through his agony he was torturing himself in his young
+simplicity of heart with the thought of the painful shock to his
+mistress when she should suddenly read of his death in a newspaper. He
+begged me to go myself to break the news to her. He bade me look for a
+key which he wore on a ribbon about his neck. I found it half buried in
+the flesh, but the dying boy did not utter a sound as I extricated it
+as gently as possible from the wound which it had made. He had scarcely
+given me the necessary directions--I was to go to his home at La
+Charite-sur-Loire for his mistress' love-letters, which he conjured me
+to return to her--when he grew speechless in the middle of a sentence;
+but from his last gesture, I understood that the fatal key would be my
+passport in his mother's house. It troubled him that he was powerless to
+utter a single word to thank me, for of my wish to serve him he had no
+doubt. He looked wistfully at me for a moment, then his eyelids drooped
+in token of farewell, and his head sank, and he died. His death was the
+only fatal accident caused by the overturn.
+
+"But it was partly his own fault," the coachman said to me.
+
+At La Charite, I executed the poor fellow's dying wishes. His mother was
+away from home, which in a manner was fortunate for me. Nevertheless, I
+had to assuage the grief of an old woman-servant, who staggered back at
+the tidings of her young master's death, and sank half-dead into a chair
+when she saw the blood-stained key. But I had another and more dreadful
+sorrow to think of, the sorrow of a woman who had lost her last love;
+so I left the old woman to her prosopopeia, and carried off the precious
+correspondence, carefully sealed by my friend of the day.
+
+The Countess' chateau was some eight leagues beyond Moulins, and then
+there was some distance to walk across country. So it was not exactly an
+easy matter to deliver my message. For divers reasons into which I need
+not enter, I had barely sufficient money to take me to Moulins. However,
+my youthful enthusiasm determined to hasten thither on foot as fast
+as possible. Bad news travels swiftly, and I wished to be first at the
+chateau. I asked for the shortest way, and hurried through the field
+paths of the Bourbonnais, bearing, as it were, a dead man on my back.
+The nearer I came to the Chateau de Montpersan, the more aghast I felt
+at the idea of my strange self-imposed pilgrimage. Vast numbers of
+romantic fancies ran in my head. I imagined all kinds of situations in
+which I might find this Comtesse de Montpersan, or, to observe the laws
+of romance, this _Juliette_, so passionately beloved of my traveling
+companion. I sketched out ingenious answers to the questions which she
+might be supposed to put to me. At every turn of a wood, in every
+beaten pathway, I rehearsed a modern version of the scene in which
+Sosie describes the battle to his lantern. To my shame be it said, I had
+thought at first of nothing but the part that _I_ was to play, of my
+own cleverness, of how I should demean myself; but now that I was in the
+country, an ominous thought flashed through my soul like a thunderbolt
+tearing its way through a veil of gray cloud.
+
+What an awful piece of news it was for a woman whose whole thoughts were
+full of her young lover, who was looking forward hour by hour to a joy
+which no words can express, a woman who had been at a world of pains to
+invent plausible pretexts to draw him to her side. Yet, after all, it
+was a cruel deed of charity to be the messenger of death! So I hurried
+on, splashing and bemiring myself in the byways of the Bourbonnais.
+
+Before very long I reached a great chestnut avenue with a pile of
+buildings at the further end--the Chateau of Montpersan stood out
+against the sky like a mass of brown cloud, with sharp, fantastic
+outlines. All the doors of the chateau stood open. This in itself
+disconcerted me, and routed all my plans; but I went in boldly, and in
+a moment found myself between a couple of dogs, barking as your
+true country-bred animal can bark. The sound brought out a hurrying
+servant-maid; who, when informed that I wished to speak to Mme. la
+Comtesse, waved a hand towards the masses of trees in the English park
+which wound about the chateau with "Madame is out there----"
+
+"Many thanks," said I ironically. I might have wandered for a couple of
+hours in the park with her "out there" to guide me.
+
+In the meantime, a pretty little girl, with curling hair, dressed in a
+white frock, a rose-colored sash, and a broad frill at the throat, had
+overheard or guessed the question and its answer. She gave me a glance
+and vanished, calling in shrill, childish tones:
+
+"Mother, here is a gentleman who wishes to speak to you!"
+
+And, along the winding alleys, I followed the skipping and dancing white
+frill, a sort of will-o'-the-wisp, that showed me the way among the
+trees.
+
+I must make a full confession. I stopped behind the last shrub in the
+avenue, pulled up my collar, rubbed my shabby hat and my trousers with
+the cuffs of my sleeves, dusted my coat with the sleeves themselves,
+and gave them a final cleansing rub one against the other. I buttoned my
+coat carefully so as to exhibit the inner, always the least worn, side
+of the cloth, and finally had turned down the tops of my trousers over
+my boots, artistically cleaned in the grass. Thanks to this Gascon
+toilet, I could hope that the lady would not take me for the local rate
+collector; but now when my thoughts travel back to that episode of my
+youth, I sometimes laugh at my own expense.
+
+Suddenly, just as I was composing myself, at a turning in the green
+walk, among a wilderness of flowers lighted up by a hot ray of sunlight,
+I saw Juliette--Juliette and her husband. The pretty little girl
+held her mother by the hand, and it was easy to see that the lady had
+quickened her pace somewhat at the child's ambiguous phrase. Taken aback
+by the sight of a total stranger, who bowed with a tolerably awkward
+air, she looked at me with a coolly courteous expression and an adorable
+pout, in which I, who knew her secret, could read the full extent of
+her disappointment. I sought, but sought in vain, to remember any of the
+elegant phrases so laboriously prepared.
+
+This momentary hesitation gave the lady's husband time to come forward.
+Thoughts by the myriad flitted through my brain. To give myself a
+countenance, I got out a few sufficiently feeble inquiries, asking
+whether the persons present were really M. le Comte and Mme. la
+Comtesse de Montpersan. These imbecilities gave me time to form my own
+conclusions at a glance, and, with a perspicacity rare at that age, to
+analyze the husband and wife whose solitude was about to be so rudely
+disturbed.
+
+The husband seemed to be a specimen of a certain type of nobleman, the
+fairest ornaments of the provinces of our day. He wore big shoes with
+stout soles to them. I put the shoes first advisedly, for they made
+an even deeper impression upon me than a seedy black coat, a pair of
+threadbare trousers, a flabby cravat, or a crumpled shirt collar.
+There was a touch of the magistrate in the man, a good deal more of the
+Councillor of the Prefecture, all the self-importance of the mayor of
+the arrondissement, the local autocrat, and the soured temper of the
+unsuccessful candidate who has never been returned since the year 1816.
+As to countenance--a wizened, wrinkled, sunburned face, and long, sleek
+locks of scanty gray hair; as to character--an incredible mixture of
+homely sense and sheer silliness; of a rich man's overbearing ways, and
+a total lack of manners; just the kind of husband who is almost entirely
+led by his wife, yet imagines himself to be the master; apt to domineer
+in trifles, and to let more important things slip past unheeded--there
+you have the man!
+
+But the Countess! Ah, how sharp and startling the contrast between
+husband and wife! The Countess was a little woman, with a flat, graceful
+figure and enchanting shape; so fragile, so dainty was she, that you
+would have feared to break some bone if you so much as touched her. She
+wore a white muslin dress, a rose-colored sash, and rose-colored ribbons
+in the pretty cap on her head; her chemisette was moulded so deliciously
+by her shoulders and the loveliest rounded contours, that the sight of
+her awakened an irresistible desire of possession in the depths of
+the heart. Her eyes were bright and dark and expressive, her movements
+graceful, her foot charming. An experienced man of pleasure would not
+have given her more than thirty years, her forehead was so girlish.
+She had all the most transient delicate detail of youth in her face. In
+character she seemed to me to resemble the Comtesse de Lignolles and the
+Marquise de B----, two feminine types always fresh in the memory of any
+young man who has read Louvet's romance.
+
+In a moment I saw how things stood, and took a diplomatic course that
+would have done credit to an old ambassador. For once, and perhaps for
+the only time in my life, I used tact, and knew in what the special
+skill of courtiers and men of the world consists.
+
+I have had so many battles to fight since those heedless days, that they
+have left me no time to distil all the least actions of daily life, and
+to do everything so that it falls in with those rules of etiquette and
+good taste which wither the most generous emotions.
+
+"M. le Comte," I said with an air of mystery, "I should like a few words
+with you," and I fell back a pace or two.
+
+He followed my example. Juliette left us together, going away
+unconcernedly, like a wife who knew that she can learn her husband's
+secrets as soon as she chooses to know them.
+
+I told the Count briefly of the death of my traveling companion. The
+effect produced by my news convinced me that his affection for his young
+collaborator was cordial enough, and this emboldened me to make reply as
+I did.
+
+"My wife will be in despair," cried he; "I shall be obliged to break the
+news of this unhappy event with great caution."
+
+"Monsieur," said I, "I addressed myself to you in the first instance,
+as in duty bound. I could not, without first informing you, deliver
+a message to Mme. la Comtesse, a message intrusted to me by an entire
+stranger; but this commission is a sort of sacred trust, a secret of
+which I have no power to dispose. From the high idea of your character
+which he gave me, I felt sure that you would not oppose me in the
+fulfilment of a dying request. Mme. la Comtesse will be at liberty to
+break the silence which is imposed upon me."
+
+At this eulogy, the Count swung his head very amiably, responded with
+a tolerably involved compliment, and finally left me a free field. We
+returned to the house. The bell rang, and I was invited to dinner. As we
+came up to the house, a grave and silent couple, Juliette stole a
+glance at us. Not a little surprised to find her husband contriving some
+frivolous excuse for leaving us together, she stopped short, giving me
+a glance--such a glance as women only can give you. In that look of
+hers there was the pardonable curiosity of the mistress of the house
+confronted with a guest dropped down upon her from the skies and
+innumerable doubts, certainly warranted by the state of my clothes, by
+my youth and my expression, all singularly at variance; there was all
+the disdain of the adored mistress, in whose eyes all men save one are
+as nothing; there were involuntary tremors and alarms; and, above all,
+the thought that it was tiresome to have an unexpected guest just now,
+when, no doubt, she had been scheming to enjoy full solitude for her
+love. This mute eloquence I understood in her eyes, and all the pity and
+compassion in me made answer in a sad smile. I thought of her, as I had
+seen her for one moment, in the pride of her beauty; standing in the
+sunny afternoon in the narrow alley with the flowers on either hand; and
+as that fair wonderful picture rose before my eyes, I could not repress
+a sigh.
+
+"Alas, madame, I have just made a very arduous journey----, undertaken
+solely on your account."
+
+"Sir!"
+
+"Oh! it is on behalf of one who calls you Juliette that I am come," I
+continued. Her face grew white.
+
+"You will not see him to-day."
+
+"Is he ill?" she asked, and her voice sank lower.
+
+"Yes. But for pity's sake, control yourself.... He intrusted me with
+secrets that concern you, and you may be sure that never messenger could
+be more discreet nor more devoted than I."
+
+"What is the matter with him?"
+
+"How if he loved you no longer?"
+
+"Oh! that is impossible!" she cried, and a faint smile, nothing less
+than frank, broke over her face. Then all at once a kind of shudder ran
+through her, and she reddened, and she gave me a wild, swift glance as
+she asked:
+
+"Is he alive?"
+
+Great God! What a terrible phrase! I was too young to bear that tone in
+her voice; I made no reply, only looked at the unhappy woman in helpless
+bewilderment.
+
+"Monsieur, monsieur, give me an answer!" she cried.
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+"Is it true? Oh! tell me the truth; I can hear the truth. Tell me the
+truth! Any pain would be less keen than this suspense."
+
+I answered by two tears wrung from me by that strange tone of hers. She
+leaned against a tree with a faint, sharp cry.
+
+"Madame, here comes your husband!"
+
+"Have I a husband?" and with those words she fled away out of sight.
+
+"Well," cried the Count, "dinner is growing cold.--Come, monsieur."
+
+Thereupon I followed the master of the house into the dining-room.
+Dinner was served with all the luxury which we have learned to expect in
+Paris. There were five covers laid, three for the Count and Countess and
+their little daughter; my own, which should have been HIS; and another
+for the canon of Saint-Denis, who said grace, and then asked:
+
+"Why, where can our dear Countess be?"
+
+"Oh! she will be here directly," said the Count. He had hastily helped
+us to the soup, and was dispatching an ample plateful with portentous
+speed.
+
+"Oh! nephew," exclaimed the canon, "if your wife were here, you would
+behave more rationally."
+
+"Papa will make himself ill!" said the child with a mischievous look.
+
+Just after this extraordinary gastronomical episode, as the Count was
+eagerly helping himself to a slice of venison, a housemaid came in with,
+"We cannot find madame anywhere, sir!"
+
+I sprang up at the words with a dread in my mind, my fears written
+so plainly in my face, that the old canon came out after me into the
+garden. The Count, for the sake of appearances, came as far as the
+threshold.
+
+"Don't go, don't go!" called he. "Don't trouble yourselves in the
+least," but he did not offer to accompany us.
+
+We three--the canon, the housemaid, and I--hurried through the garden
+walks and over the bowling-green in the park, shouting, listening for
+an answer, growing more uneasy every moment. As we hurried along, I told
+the story of the fatal accident, and discovered how strongly the maid
+was attached to her mistress, for she took my secret dread far more
+seriously than the canon. We went along by the pools of water; all over
+the park we went; but we neither found the Countess nor any sign that
+she had passed that way. At last we turned back, and under the walls of
+some outbuildings I heard a smothered, wailing cry, so stifled that it
+was scarcely audible. The sound seemed to come from a place that
+might have been a granary. I went in at all risks, and there we found
+Juliette. With the instinct of despair, she had buried herself deep in
+the hay, hiding her face in it to deaden those dreadful cries--pudency
+even stronger than grief. She was sobbing and crying like a child, but
+there was a more poignant, more piteous sound in the sobs. There was
+nothing left in the world for her. The maid pulled the hay from her, her
+mistress submitting with the supine listlessness of a dying animal. The
+maid could find nothing to say but "There! madame; there, there----"
+
+"What is the matter with her? What is it, niece?" the old canon kept on
+exclaiming.
+
+At last, with the girl's help, I carried Juliette to her room, gave
+orders that she was not to be disturbed, and that every one must be told
+that the Countess was suffering from a sick headache. Then we came down
+to the dining-room, the canon and I.
+
+Some little time had passed since we left the dinner-table; I had
+scarcely given a thought to the Count since we left him under the
+peristyle; his indifference had surprised me, but my amazement increased
+when we came back and found him seated philosophically at table. He had
+eaten pretty nearly all the dinner, to the huge delight of his little
+daughter; the child was smiling at her father's flagrant infraction of
+the Countess' rules. The man's odd indifference was explained to me by
+a mild altercation which at once arose with the canon. The Count was
+suffering from some serious complaint. I cannot remember now what it
+was, but his medical advisers had put him on a very severe regimen, and
+the ferocious hunger familiar to convalescents, sheer animal appetite,
+had overpowered all human sensibilities. In that little space I had seen
+frank and undisguised human nature under two very different aspects, in
+such a sort that there was a certain grotesque element in the very midst
+of a most terrible tragedy.
+
+The evening that followed was dreary. I was tired. The canon racked his
+brains to discover a reason for his niece's tears. The lady's husband
+silently digested his dinner; content, apparently, with the Countess'
+rather vague explanation, sent through the maid, putting forward some
+feminine ailment as her excuse. We all went early to bed.
+
+As I passed the door of the Countess' room on the way to my night's
+lodging, I asked the servant timidly for news of her. She heard my
+voice, and would have me come in, and tried to talk, but in vain--she
+could not utter a sound. She bent her head, and I withdrew. In spite of
+the painful agitation, which I had felt to the full as youth can feel, I
+fell asleep, tired out with my forced march.
+
+It was late in the night when I was awakened by the grating sound of
+curtain rings drawn sharply over the metal rods. There sat the Countess
+at the foot of my bed. The light from a lamp set on my table fell full
+upon her face.
+
+"Is it really true, monsieur, quite true?" she asked. "I do not know
+how I can live after that awful blow which struck me down a little while
+since; but just now I feel calm. I want to know everything."
+
+"What calm!" I said to myself as I saw the ghastly pallor of her face
+contrasting with her brown hair, and heard the guttural tones of her
+voice. The havoc wrought in her drawn features filled me with dumb
+amazement.
+
+Those few hours had bleached her; she had lost a woman's last glow of
+autumn color. Her eyes were red and swollen, nothing of their beauty
+remained, nothing looked out of them save her bitter and exceeding
+grief; it was as if a gray cloud covered the place through which the sun
+had shone.
+
+I gave her the story of the accident in a few words, without laying too
+much stress on some too harrowing details. I told her about our first
+day's journey, and how it had been filled with recollections of her and
+of love. And she listened eagerly, without shedding a tear, leaning her
+face towards me, as some zealous doctor might lean to watch any change
+in a patient's face. When she seemed to me to have opened her whole
+heart to pain, to be deliberately plunging herself into misery with the
+first delirious frenzy of despair, I caught at my opportunity, and told
+her of the fears that troubled the poor dying man, told her how and
+why it was that he had given me this fatal message. Then her tears were
+dried by the fires that burned in the dark depths within her. She grew
+even paler. When I drew the letters from beneath my pillow and held them
+out to her, she took them mechanically; then, trembling from head to
+foot, she said in a hollow voice:
+
+"And _I_ burned all his letters!--I have nothing of him left!--Nothing!
+nothing!"
+
+She struck her hand against her forehead.
+
+"Madame----" I began.
+
+She glanced at me in the convulsion of grief.
+
+"I cut this from his head, this lock of his hair."
+
+And I gave her that last imperishable token that had been a very part
+of him she loved. Ah! if you had felt, as I felt then, her burning tears
+falling on your hands, you would know what gratitude is, when it follows
+so closely upon the benefit. Her eyes shone with a feverish glitter,
+a faint ray of happiness gleamed out of her terrible suffering, as she
+grasped my hands in hers, and said, in a choking voice:
+
+"Ah! you love! May you be happy always. May you never lose her whom you
+love."
+
+She broke off, and fled away with her treasure.
+
+Next morning, this night-scene among my dreams seemed like a dream; to
+make sure of the piteous truth, I was obliged to look fruitlessly under
+my pillow for the packet of letters. There is no need to tell you how
+the next day went. I spent several hours of it with the Juliette whom my
+poor comrade had so praised to me. In her lightest words, her gestures,
+in all that she did and said, I saw proofs of the nobleness of soul, the
+delicacy of feeling which made her what she was, one of those beloved,
+loving, and self-sacrificing natures so rarely found upon this earth.
+
+In the evening the Comte de Montpersan came himself as far as Moulins
+with me. There he spoke with a kind of embarrassment:
+
+"Monsieur, if it is not abusing your good-nature, and acting very
+inconsiderately towards a stranger to whom we are already under
+obligations, would you have the goodness, as you are going to Paris, to
+remit a sum of money to M. de ---- (I forget the name), in the Rue du
+Sentier; I owe him an amount, and he asked me to send it as soon as
+possible."
+
+"Willingly," said I. And in the innocence of my heart, I took charge
+of a rouleau of twenty-five louis d'or, which paid the expenses of
+my journey back to Paris; and only when, on my arrival, I went to
+the address indicated to repay the amount to M. de Montpersan's
+correspondent, did I understand the ingenious delicacy with which
+Juliette had obliged me. Was not all the genius of a loving woman
+revealed in such a way of lending, in her reticence with regard to a
+poverty easily guessed?
+
+And what rapture to have this adventure to tell to a woman who clung to
+you more closely in dread, saying, "Oh, my dear, not you! _You_ must not
+die!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Message, by Honore de Balzac
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1189 ***