Margurite: A Letter
(also see: the reply)
June 30, 1838
Dear Musichetta,
I know it's been ages since I spoke to you, and I'm terribly sorry that I have not written to you more often, but now I feel that you are the only person left alive who truly understands me. And so I write.
I actually was in Paris last year, but I had no idea where to find you. I should have looked harder, I know, but how does one explain that she's looking for the sometimes mistress of her now-deceased guardian? But I finally sat down and searched you out. I can't say that Eric, Gabriel's brother, approves, but he couldn’t stop me from writing you if he tried. Anyway, how are you? Life's been good to me, though I have missed you and everything in Paris. You needn't worry, the Laigle family has taken good care of me, and while I must admit that I have never quite felt like family, I have been comfortable here.
But now I've reached a problem, and I feel I can only confide in you: It has been arranged that I am to marry. He's the son of a merchant here, and I must admit that he has been courting me for a while, but I never expected this. Oh, Musichetta, what am I to do? I don’t want to marry this man! It wouldn't even be I, Margurite LeClerk, marrying him. It would be a lie. For the past six years I've been living (at least to those outside the family) as a distant cousin of the Laigles, a young lady from a respectable family who had the sad misfortune of being orphaned. I've been told to forget my past, but how can I? It's funny, when Laigle was alive, all I wanted to do was forget my past. I didn't want to remember my mother and loving on the street. It was too painful. At times I almost convinced myself that Laigle had always taken care of me. But now that I'm forced to forget it, I'm afraid to, for if I can forget the misery of my young life, what's to stop me from forgetting Laigle and Joly and the rest of them? I can't disgrace their memory like that.
I know, I know, marriage is far from the worst thing that could happen to me. I've been horribly lucky; I still am. I don't know, maybe..maybe I'd feel better about this whole thing if I knew I could tell the truth to this man. But God, how he would scorn me if I told him I was really the daughter of a Parisian prostitute, raised for four years by a university student who died a traitor to his country! That is all he would see me as, nothing more, if I spoke a word to him about anything of my life before I came to live here.
Please understand, Musichetta, this letter is not a plea for help. You have no obligation to me, and even if you did there is little you could do to stop this chain of events from occurring. But even though it's been years since we've been in contact, I feel like you're the only one I can reach out to, and so I ask, if not for your guidance, then only for your sweet listening ear.
Yours forever,
Margurite LeClerk-Laigle