The movement of her hand carried up to her eyes, whose sockets were empty, seemed to me to signify: “Blindness is death!”
I had remained blind too long, and always in my dreams I saw my grandmother again with the frightful gesture of her hand raised to her empty eyes.
I have never seen her again with this gesture since I wrote my Rêve sur le Divin, which, with my reborn soul, I dedicated to the newly born soul of my granddaughter, Juliette. It was a book written with deep feeling, the inspiration of which I believe to have come from my beloved grandmother.
The day after this strange apparition I left for Chauny with my daughter.
My mother, profoundly moved by her mother’s death and by the causes which had determined it, received me with tenderness and with tears of repentance. When my grandmother was dying, and when she implored my father’s forgiveness, she had exacted from her daughter a promise that she would at the same time ask her husband’s pardon for the harm she had done by her jealousy.
I passed some sad but peaceful weeks with my parents. My grandfather obtained my father’s and mother’s consent to come and live with them.
“It will not be for long,” he said to them; “for I can never live without my dear scolder, and you will bury me before this year is over.” He died eleven months after my grandmother.
From the day my grandmother left us, my father’s one thought was to replace her in my life, and he bestowed a double affection upon me. He encouraged me to work, aided me with his advice, and said to me:
“When your married life becomes even more intolerable to you than it is now, your mother and I will dedicate our lives to you. We will follow wherever you may lead us. Work, work, and become known. There is no other way by which a woman can gain her liberty than by affirming her personality.”