I say, you remember that day's riding, and how after it the world was
changed for you and me, and how that same evening the elders saw that it
was changed.
You will remember that for two years we were not allowed to meet again.
When the two years were passed we met indeed by a mere accident of that
rich and tedious life wherein we were both now engaged. I was returned
from leave before Tournay; you had heard, I think, a false report that I
had been wounded in the dreadful business at Fontenoy (which to remember
even now horrifies me a little). I had heard and knew which of the great
names you now bore by marriage. The next day it was your husband who
rode with me to Marly. I liked him well enough. I have grown to like him
better. He is an honest man, though I confess his philosophers weary me.
When I say "an honest man" I am giving the highest praise I know.
My dear, that was sixteen years ago.
You may not even now understand, so engrossing is the toilsome and
excited ritual of that rich world at Versailles, how blest you are: your
children are growing round you: your daughters are beginning to reveal
your own beauty, and your sons will show in these next years immediately
before us that temper which in you was a spirit and a height of being,
and in them, men, will show as plain courage. During that long space of
years your house has remained well ordered (it was your husband's
doing).
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