I
loved you thus,--I, the friend of the man you had chosen and were
about to marry; I, poor; I, the steward,--a voluntary service, but
still the steward of your household.
"In this immense misfortune I found a happy life. To be to you an
indispensable machine, to know myself useful to your comfort, your
luxury, has been the source of deep enjoyments. If these
enjoyments were great when I thought only of Adam, think what they
were to my soul when the woman I loved was the mainspring of all I
did. I have known the pleasures of maternity in my love. I
accepted life thus. Like the paupers who live along the great
highways, I built myself a hut on the borders of your beautiful
domain, though I never sought to approach you. Poor and lonely,
struck blind by Adam's good fortune, I was, nevertheless, the
giver. Yes, you were surrounded by a love as pure as a guardian-
angel's; it waked while you slept; it caressed you with a look as
you passed; it was happy in its own existence,--you were the sun
of my native land to me, poor exile, who now writes to you with
tears in his eyes as he thinks of the happiness of those first
days.
"When I was eighteen years old, having no one to love, I took for
my ideal mistress a charming woman in Warsaw, to whom I confided
all my thoughts, my wishes; I made her the queen of my nights and
days.
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