“Pray, do not think that my friend Méry, an artist and a clever man, is guilty of such a tissue of fables and nonsense as that! I believe I can guess the real author. But I shall soon have a true biography ready, one I have written myself.”
“And you write so well!”
“Nay, madame, I do not mean to praise the style, but simply to say that at least it will be true. In it, without naming you, I have been able to tell all my feeling for you without restraint.”
Silence.
“I have also heard of you,” went on Madame F., “from a friend of yours who married my husband’s niece.”
“Yes, it is he whom I asked to tell me the fate of a letter I wrote you sixteen years ago. I longed to know whether you received it. I never saw him again, and now he is dead.”
Silence.
“My life has been very quiet, very sad. I lost some of my children, and my husband died while the others were very young. I did my best alone to bring them up well.”
Silence.
“I am indeed grateful, M. Berlioz, for the kind thoughts you have kept of me.”