"Why did I say hearts broke? They don't break, they go dead. Edmund, I wonder if, wherever you are, you are thinking of me? You are certainly not thinking that soon you will see me. I have been trying to decide what to do for the best, and now Papa says I shall not stay here till what he calls my shame is born. I will not stay where my hope and my joy is called my shame, and though I would never ask you anything for myself, I must ask if for the child. I am coming to England, and I must start now or I shall not arrive in time. I shall leave all my letters behind with my journal. I do not even know what I feel when I think of seeing you again. "CANDIDE DE CLERISSAC." There was still one paper more, an envelope that had come by courier and was addressed to Marie Bernardy. It had been opened, but inside was an enclosure of which the seals were still unbroken. Without any shock of surprise Bernardy saw it was addressed to him. "My son" (he read), "my little son, who, when you read this, will be a grown man, I who have not quite lost my birthright of prevision, know that some day you will go to my town and read this. Will you be in trouble, my little son? Something tells me you will be near the end, and so I write this to help you. You are lying on my lap now, and I think we shall have many years to wander in together, and you will grow away from me, but when you read this you will find me again, and something more as well. My son, I got no further than Paris, bearing you beneath my heart. There I heard from his priest-brother that he had been killed hunting, and there you were born. So you are mine, you belong to no one but me. Listen, my son. Life is good, but a clean death is good too. Never be afraid of one or the other. And when you read this in the home that was mine, put fear away and be a man. Find the one with whom you can face whatever comes without flinching, and when you have found her, never let her go till your arms must loose for good. My son, I was wrong to say that hearts went dead, they are merely numbed for a time if only we are never weak enough to regret. Always remember that it is the good woman who gives and the good man who creates, and take what is left to you of life and make with it. I am not merely imagining you as you read; I am actually with you, I have fused the present and the future into one, and I can see the dawn-light barring the floor through the slats of the shutters, and you are sitting by an empty hearth. Go out, my child, into the dawn. Edmond, my son, however long it is before you join me, I am to all eternity "YOUR MOTHER."