How good, how ineffably good you are, dear kind father, to have come yourself to reassure me about the little feverish symptoms that are beginning to show themselves to-night in your little girl’s condition. Let us hope they will yield to remedies this time, and that the night may prove more calm and satisfactory than the day just passed. Meanwhile thank you with all my heart, thank you with all my soul, for allowing me to share your family hopes and fears and joys and troubles. Thank you. If God hears and grants my prayers, as I trust with sacred confidence He will, your adored child will soon be restored to health and happiness.
Juliette.
Guernsey,
Monday, 7.30 p.m., April 13th, 1857.
If you say another word I shall seize them all,[110] so there! I shall certainly not place my house, my rooms, my old age, my tables, chairs, carpets, water, ink, my virtue, great and small, at your disposal, to be rewarded by seeing masterpieces pass under my very nose on their way to Teleki, Mademoiselle Alix, and other trollops of her calibre. I must have some too; castles, moonlight scenes, sunrises, and fog effects. If you are not prepared for a quarrel, you must give me at least my share. Ah, here you come! I am not sorry to see you....
Juliette.
Jersey,
Saturday, 4 p.m., July 1st, 1857.
Darling beloved, I begin my letter in the hope of its being interrupted shortly, and completed this evening with a lighter heart; but I so need to love you that I must take the initiative, my adored one. I have just read the sad, tender poems you gave me to copy. I see you coming....
8.45 p.m.
I have just finished copying those adorable verses, so poignant through their very restraint,[111] and I weep for my own grief as well as yours, my poor afflicted friends. The shadow which has fallen across your lives is black night in my case, for all the radiant joys of family life were wiped out with the death of my only child. When I think of my forlorn infancy bereft of father and mother, and of what my deathbed will be, without the loving tears of a child of my own, I feel as if a curse were laid upon me for the expiation of some hideous crime. Yet, oh God, I am not ungrateful to Thee, far from it; I feel indeed with the deepest gratitude of heart and soul how good Thou art! May you be as greatly blest as you are loved by me, my Victor. You are divinely grand and sublime. I kiss your dear little feet and your angel’s wings. I worship you on my knees.