"Six months after the revolution of July I received this letter,which concludes the story of this couple:--"'MONSIEUR MAURICE,--I am dying though I am a mother--perhaps because I am a mother.I have played my part as a wife well;I have deceived my husband.I have had happiness not less genuine than the tears shed by actresses on the stage.I am dying for society,for the family,for marriage,as the early Christians died for God!I know not of what Iam dying,and I am honestly trying to find out,for I am not perverse;but I am bent on explaining my malady to you--you who brought that heavenly physician your uncle,at whose word I surrendered.He was my director;I nursed him in his last illness,and he showed me the way to heaven,bidding me persevere in my duty.
"'And I have done my duty.
"'I do not blame those who forget.I admire them as strong and necessary natures;but I have the malady of memory!I have not been able twice to feel that love of the heart which identifies a woman with the man she loves.To the last moment,as you know,I cried to your heart,in the confessional,and to my husband,"Have mercy!"But there was no mercy.Well,and I am dying,dying with stupendous courage.No courtesan was ever more gay than I.My poor Octave is happy;I let his love feed on the illusions of my heart.I throw all my powers into this terrible masquerade;the actress is applauded,feasted,smothered in flowers;but the invisible rival comes every day to seek its prey--a fragment of my life.I am rent and I smile.Ismile on two children,but it is the elder,the dead one,that will triumph!I told you so before.The dead child calls me,and I am going to him.
"'The intimacy of marriage without love is a position in which my soul feels degraded every hour.I can never weep or give myself up to dreams but when I am alone.The exigencies of society,the care of my child,and that of Octave's happiness never leave me a moment to refresh myself,to renew my strength,as I could in my solitude.The incessant need for watchfulness startles my heart with constant alarms.I have not succeeded in implanting in my soul the sharp-eared vigilance that lies with facility,and has the eyes of a lynx.It is not the lip of one I love that drinks my tears and kisses them;my burning eyes are cooled with water,and not with tender lips.It is my soul that acts a part,and that perhaps is why I am dying!I lock up my griefs with so much care that nothing is to be seen of it;it must eat into something,and it has attacked my life.