Here she is! Ah! Victor, do not be angry! Victor, I am at your feet—Victor, I will be reasonable for the whole of the rest of my life if only you will let me add 15 fr. to the sum you promised me. Oh, Victor, I have not time to wait for your answer and yet I fear to annoy you. Ah, no, you are too kind to be angry with your poor Juju who loves you with such absolute admiring, devoted love! You will look at her with your gentle, ineffable smile, and say I was right—surely, yes, you will. Three cheers for Toto! Juju is a clever woman ... at heart. Yes, it is quite true and I am the happiest of women.
Juliette.
Tuesday, 9.30 a.m., September, 1845.
I have just been gardening, beloved. I am soaked with dew and all muddy, but I have spent three hours thinking of you without any bitterness. My eyes were as moist as my flowers, but I was not weeping. While I busied myself with the garden, I reviewed in thought the lovely flowers of my past happiness. I saw them again fresh and blooming as the first day, and I felt close to you, separated only by a breath. As long as the illusion lasted I was almost happy. I should have liked to pluck my soul and send it to you as a nosegay. Perhaps what I am saying is silly, yet it is the sort of nonsense that can only issue direct from the tenderest, most passionate heart that ever lived. For nearly thirteen years past, I have never once written to you without feeling my hand tremble and my eyes fill. When I speak of you, no matter to whom, my heart swells as if it would burst through my lips. When I am dead, I am certain that the imprint of my love will be found on my heart. It is impossible to worship as I do without leaving some visible trace behind when life is over.
My beloved Victor, let your thoughts dwell with me, so that my days may seem shorter and less dreary; and do try to surprise me by coming to-night. Oh, how happy I shall be if you do that!
Meanwhile, I love you more than I can say.
Juliette.
Saturday, 8 a.m., September 27th, 1845.
Good morning my beloved, my soul, my life, my adored Victor. How are you? I hope yesterday did not tire you too much. I forgot until you reminded me that you have been forbidden to walk much, but I do trust it did you no harm; did it, Victor darling? As for me I felt no fatigue, I seemed to have wings. I should have liked to place my feet on all the paths we traversed together eleven years ago, to kiss the very stones of the roads and the leaves on the trees, and to pick all the flowers in the woods, so keenly did I fancy they were the very same that watched us pass together all those years ago. I gazed at you my adored Victor, and in my eyes you were as young and handsome, nay handsomer even, than eleven years ago. I looked into my heart and found it full of the same ecstasy and adoration that animated it the first day I loved you. Nothing was changed in us or about us. The same ardent, devoted, sad and sweet affection in our hearts, the same autumn sun and sky above our heads, the same picture in the same frame; nothing had changed in eleven years. I would have given a decade of my life to stand alone for ten minutes in that house that has sheltered our memories for so long. I should like to have carried away ashes from the fireplace, dust from the floors. I should have liked to pray and weep, where once I prayed and wept, to have died of love on the spot where once I accepted your soul in a kiss. I had to exercise superhuman self-control not to perpetrate some act of folly in the presence of that girl who showed us so indifferently over a house I could have purchased at the price of half the rest of my life. Fortunately, thanks to her profound ignorance of our identity, she noticed nothing, and we were each able to bring away a tiny relic of our former happiness. Mine must be buried with me when I die.