I do not blame you; it is the fault of your twenty years. From Alcibiades down to yourself, do we not know that young people are unacquainted with friendship, save in their sorrows? Happiness sometimes makes them indiscreet, but never confiding. I am ready to say with Socrates: I love my friends to come to me when they are unhappy.[14] But, in his quality of a philosopher, he could dispense with them when they did not come. In that I shew less wisdom than he, and I felt your silence with all a woman’s weakness.
Do not, however, think me exacting: I am far from being that! The same sentiment which makes me notice these privations enables me to support them with courage, when they are the proof, or the cause, of my friends’ happiness. I do not count on you, therefore, for to-morrow evening, save in so far as love may leave you free and disengaged, and I forbid you to make the least sacrifice for me.
Adieu, Chevalier; it will be a real festival to see you again: will you come?
At the Château de ..., 29th November, 17**.
LETTER THE HUNDRED AND FORTY-SEVENTH
MADAME DE VOLANGES TO MADAME DE ROSEMONDE
I am sure you will be as grieved as I am, my worthy friend, to learn of the condition in which Madame de Tourvel lies; she has been ill since yesterday: her disorder appeared so suddenly, and exhibits such grave symptoms, that I am really alarmed.
A burning fever, a violent and almost constant delirium, an unquenchable thirst: that is all that can be remarked. The doctors say they can make no diagnosis as yet; and the treatment will be all the more difficult, because the patient refuses every kind of remedy with such obstinacy that it was necessary to hold her down by force to bleed her; and the same course had to be followed on two other occasions to tie up her bandage, which in her delirium she persists in tearing off.
You, who have seen her, as I have, so fragile, timid and quiet, cannot conceive that four persons are barely enough to hold her; and at the slightest expostulation she flies into indescribable fury! For my part, I am afraid it is something worse than delirium, and that she is really gone out of her mind.
What increases my fear on this subject is a thing which occurred the day before yesterday. Upon that day, she arrived about eleven o’clock in the forenoon, with her waiting-maid, at the Convent of.... As she was educated in that house, and had continued the habit of sometimes visiting it, she was received as usual, and seemed to everyone calm and in good health. About two hours later, she enquired if the room she had occupied as a school-girl was vacant, and, on being answered in the affirmative, she asked to go and see it: the Prioress accompanied her with some other nuns. It was then that she declared that she had come back to take her abode in that room, which, said she, she ought never to have left, and which, she added, she would never leave until her death: those were her words.
At first they knew not what to say: but when their first astonishment was over, it was represented to her that her position as a married woman prevented them from receiving her without a special permission. Neither this, nor a thousand other reasons, made any impression; and from that moment she obstinately refused, not only to leave the convent, but even her room. At last, weary of the discussion, they consented, at seven o’clock in the evening, that she should pass the night there. Her carriage and servants were dismissed; and they awaited the next day to come to some decision.