Consuelo perhaps experienced the effects of this, while she read what may really be called the first _billet-doux_ she had ever received. She felt herself courageous, bold, and almost rash. A kind of intoxication made her feel this declaration of love more warm and persuasive than all Albert's words, precisely as she felt the kiss of Albert more soft and gentle than Anzoleto's. She then began to write without hesitation, and while the rockets shook the echoes of the park, while the odor of saltpetre stifled the perfume of flowers, and Bengalese fires illuminated the _façade_ of the house, unnoticed by her, Consuelo wrote in reply:
"Yes, I love you--I have said so; and even if I repent and blush at it, I never can efface from the strange, and incomprehensible book of my fate, the page I wrote myself and which is in your hands. It was the expression of a guilty impulse--mad, perhaps, but intensely true, and ardently felt. Had you been the humblest of men, I would yet have placed my ideal in you. Had I degraded myself by contemptuous and cruel conduct, I would yet have experienced by contact with your heart, an intoxication I had never known, and which appeared to me to be holy as angels are pure. You see I repeat to you what I wrote in relation to the confession I made to Beppo. We do nothing but repeat to each other what we are. I think we are keenly and truly satisfied of this mutual conviction. Why and how could we be deceived? We do not, and perhaps never will, know each other, and cannot explain the first causes of this love, any more than we can foresee its mysterious ends. Listen: I abandon myself to your word, to your honor, and do not combat the sentiments you inspire. Do not let me deceive myself. I ask of you but one thing--not to feign to love me--never to see me if you do not love me--to abandon me to my fate, whatsoe'er it be, with no apprehension that I should accuse or curse you for the rapid illusions of happiness you have conferred on me. It seems to me what I ask is easy. There are moments in which I am afraid, I confess, on account of my blind confidence in you. But as soon as you appear in my presence, or when I look at your writing, which is carefully disguised, as if you were anxious to deprive me of any visible and external index; in fine, when I hear the sound even of your steps, all my fears pass away, and I cannot refrain from thinking that you are my better angel. Why hide you thus? what fearful secret is hidden by your mask and your silence? Must I fear and reject you, when I learn your name or see your face? If you are absolutely unknown to me as you have written, why yield such blind obedience to the strange law of the Invisibles, even when, as to-day, you are ready to shake off your bonds and follow me to the end of the world? And if I exacted it, and fled with you, would you take off your mask and keep no secrets from me? 'To know you,' you say, 'it is necessary for me to promise'--what? For me to bind myself to the Invisibles? To do what? Alas! must I with closed eyes, mute, and without conscience, with my mind in darkness, _give up_ and abandon my will as you did, knowing your fate? To determine me to these unheard-of acts of devotion, would you not make a slight infraction of the regulations of your order? I see distinctly that you belong to one of those mysterious orders known here as _secret societies_, and which it is said are numerous in Germany; unless this be merely a political plot against----, as is said in Berlin. Let this be as it may, if I be left at liberty to refuse when I am told what is required of me, I will take the most terrible oaths never to make any revelations. Can I do more, without being unworthy of the love of a man who overcomes his scruples, and the fidelity of his oath so far as to be unwilling for me to hear that word I have pronounced myself, in violation of the prudence and modesty of my sex--'_I love you._'"