Síntesis del grafeno

Do you, my Cousin, mean to spend your life mourning that poor Chaillot, and must the dead cause you to forget the living? Your grief is just, and I share it, but must it be eternal? Since you lost your mother, she had raised you with the greatest of care; she was more your friend than your governess. She loved you tenderly, and loved me

because you do; she never instilled in us anything but principles of propriety and honor.

I know all that, my dear, and concede it with pleasure. But concede also that the good old woman was not very prudent with us, that she unnecessarily told us the most

indiscreet secrets, that she was forever repeating maxims of gallantry, the adventures of her youth, the wiles of lovers, and that in order to protect us from the snares of men, if she didn't exactly teach us to set snares for them, she nonetheless instructed us about a thousand things which young maidens would do well not to know. Be comforted therefore in her loss, as a misfortune which is not unredeemed. At the age we have reached, her lessons were beginning to be dangerous, and Heaven perhaps took her from us at the moment when it was not good for her to remain with us longer.

Remember all that you said to me when I lost the best of brothers. Is Chaillot dearer to you? Have you more reason to grieve for her?

Come back, my dear, she no longer needs you. Alas! while you are wasting your time in superfluous grief, how can you not fear bringing more upon yourself? How can you not fear, you who know the state of my heart, abandoning your friend to perils which your presence would have prevented? Oh how many things have happened since your

departure! You will shudder to learn what dangers I have run by my imprudence. I hope I am delivered from them; but I find myself, so to speak, at another's discretion: it is for you to restore me to myself. Hasten therefore to return. I have said nothing so long as your ministries were useful to your poor Governess; I would have been the first to exhort you to take care of her. Now that she is no more, it is to her family that you owe them: we shall better fulfill them here together than you would alone in the country, and

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you will discharge the duties of gratitude without neglecting those of friendship.

Since my Father's departure we have returned to our former manner of life and my mother leaves my side less often. But this is more out of habit than mistrust. Her social calls still occupy many of the moments she does not wish to steal from my little lessons, and then Babi fills her role rather negligently. Although it seems to me my good mother is much too secure, I cannot bring myself to warn her; I would like to provide for my safety without losing her good opinion of me, and you are the only one who can

reconcile all that. Come back, my Claire, come without delay. I feel bad about lessons I take without you, and I am afraid of learning too much. Our master is not merely a man of merit; he is virtuous, and thus all the more to be feared. I am too satisfied with him to be satisfied with myself. At his age and ours, with the most virtuous of men, when he is easy to love, it is better there be two maidens than one.

Letter VII Reply

I hear you, and tremble for you. Not that I believe the danger as pressing as you imagine it. Your fears temper mine with respect to the present: but the future terrifies me, and if you cannot master yourself, I foresee nothing but misfortunes. Alas! how many times did poor Chaillot predict to me that your heart's first sigh would seal your life's destiny!

Ah, Cousin! still so young, must we see your fate already accomplished? How we shall miss this able woman whose loss you think advantageous to us! Perhaps it would have been advantageous to fall from the outset into surer hands; but in leaving hers we know too much ever to allow ourselves to be governed by others, and not enough to govern ourselves: she alone could shield us from the dangers to which she had exposed us. She taught us much, and we have, it seems to me, done much thinking for our age. The warm and tender friendship that united us almost from the cradle has, in a manner of speaking, enlightened our hearts early on about every passion. We know their signs and their effects rather well; we lack only the art of repressing them. God grant that your young philosopher know more of that art than we.

When I say we, you hear me, it is of you above all that I am speaking: for in regard to me, the Governess always told me that my recklessness would stand me in stead of reason, that I would never have the wit to know how to love, and that I was too foolish ever to commit follies. My Julie, look

out for yourself; the better she augured for your reason, the more she feared for your heart. Take courage, all the same; all that propriety and honor can do, I know your soul will do, and mine, do not doubt it, will do all that friendship can do in turn. If we have learned too much for our years, at least such study came at no cost to our morals. Do believe, my dear, that there are many simpler maidens, who are less honest than we: if we are honest, it is because we choose to be, and whatever people may say, that is the means of being so more surely.

However on the basis of what you are telling me, I shall not have a moment's peace until I am by your side; for if you fear danger, it is not entirely illusory. It is true that prevention is easy; a word to your mother and that is the end; but I see what you mean;

you want nothing to do with an expedient that puts an end to it all; you are willing to relinquish the right to succumb, but not the honor of the struggle. O poor Cousin!... if only the least glimmer... That the Baron d'Étange should consent to give his daughter, his only child, to a petty bourgeois without fortune! Do you expect that?... what then do you expect? what do you want?... poor, poor Cousin!... Fear nothing, however, from me. Your friend will keep your secret. Many would find it is more honest to reveal it; maybe they would be right. For myself, who am not a great reasoner, I want nothing to do with an honesty that betrays faith, trust, friendship; I imagine that every relationship, every age has its maxims, its duties, its virtues, that what would be

prudence to others, would to me be perfidy, and that to lump everything together, rather than making us virtuous, makes us wicked. If your love is weak, we shall overcome it;

if it is extreme, to attack it with violent means is to expose it to tragic consequences, and friendship should attempt only those means for which it can accept responsibility.

But on the other hand, you will have to toe the line when you are under my

guardianship. You will see, you will see what it's like to have an eighteen-year-old Duenna! ¹²

It is not, as you know, for my own pleasure that I am far from you, and spring is not as pleasant in the country as you think; here we suffer from both cold and heat; there is no shade when we go walking, and we have to heat the house. My Father for his part doesn't fail to notice, for all his construction projects, that the gazette arrives later here than in town. So everyone asks nothing better than to return there, and you shall

embrace me, I hope, in four or five days. But what makes me uneasy is that four or five days make I don't know how many hours, several of which are reserved for the

philosopher. For the philosopher, do you hear me, Cousin? Remember it is for him only that all those hours are supposed to strike.

Now don't go blushing at that and lowering your eyes. For you it is

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possible to assume a serious mien; it doesn't go with your features. You know full well that I can't weep without laughing, and am not for that less sensible; it distresses me no less to be far from you; I do not mourn the good Chaillot any less. I am infinitely

grateful for your willingness to share the care of her family with me; I will never in all my days abandon them, but you would no longer be yourself if you lost some

opportunity for doing good. I agree that poor Mie ¹³ babbled too much, was rather free with her familiar talk, hardly discrete with young maidens, and liked to recall old times. Indeed it is not so much her qualities of mind I miss, even though she had some excellent ones amidst the bad. The loss I mourn in her is her good heart, her perfect attachment that gave her for me both a mother's tenderness and a sister's confidence.

She stood me in stead of my whole family; my mother I scarce knew; my father loves me as much as he knows how; we have lost your amiable brother; my own brothers I almost never see. So here I am like an abandoned orphan. My child, I have no one left but you; for your good mother is you. Yet you are right. I have you: I was weeping!

Then I was foolish: why should I weep?

P. S. For fear of a mishap, I address this letter to our master,¹⁴ so that it will more surely reach you.