We must not destroy the legends which the peoples weave round their Sovereigns.
I am left alone, the sole remnant of a shipwreck, which proves how fragile and vain are the grandeurs of this world.
I have lived; I have been. I wish to be nothing, not even a memory. I am the Past. I live, but am no more; a shadow, a phantom, a walking sorrow.... I have renounced the future. I live in my youth, in my past. And all the rest is shade, obscure shade. I am like these trees, voyez-vous. They also, like me, live on the memory of their past beauty. But they look forward to the spring-time. I do not—I have nothing more to expect. My sad winter even has come to an end.
Pray and weep with me. My sister is dead.
It is sad that after so many sorrows they will not let me have that calm which I need so much.
I firmly believe that they that are gone are happier than we. (In a telegram to Monsignor Goddard on the death of his sister.)
(She had been asked at Chislehurst why, although so many had offered to share her misfortunes, she had accepted the devotion of only one or two persons. And she answered:)
Quand on est au milieu de la tempête, et qu’avec soi on traine la foudre, il ne faut pas laisser les autres vous rejoindre. (When you are in the midst of the storm, and dragging the thunder in your wake, you must not let others be exposed to it.)
In leaving to others the honour of the defence of France in 1870, I obeyed a sentiment of personal abnegation. I did not wish to divide the country when the enemy might at any moment have entered by the breach opened to it by our internal dissensions.
I seek peace and forgetfulness.