I thank you with sacred emotion, my dear one, for your inclusion of me in the sublime and magnificent exordium you pronounced yesterday on the noble wife of Louis Blanc. I accept it without false modesty, because I feel I deserve it, and I am proud and grateful for this ante-apotheosis you made of me, a living woman, standing at the open grave of the devoted deceased. I am sure her spirit will not have grudged it, and that she blesses you from above, as I do from below, joining her prayers to mine, that God may grant all grace and divine consolation to those we love. I have already re-read your splendid oration many times to-day, and although I know it by heart, each repetition discloses some fresh beauty in it. My one cry is: I love you! I love you!! I love you!!! All my heart and soul are contained in those words: I love you.
J.
Monday, 10 a.m., November 11th, 1878.
No, my beloved, you have no right to endanger your precious health and risk your glorious life for nothing. “Art for art’s sake” is not permissible in your case, and we shall oppose it strenuously, even at the risk of curtailing your liberty. I am sorry, but there it is—you must make up your mind to it. There are plenty of useless men in this world who may waste their lives as they like, but you must guard and preserve yours for as long as it pleases God to grant it to you for the honour and happiness of humanity. So, my dear little man, I implore you not to repeat yesterday’s imprudence, or any other, for all our sakes, including your adorable grandchildren’s and mine whose health and life and soul you are. When I see you so careless of yourself I cannot help feeling you no longer love me, and that my continued presence is so wearisome to you that you want to be rid of it at any price. Then I am seized with a desperate longing to deliver you of me for ever, rather than be the involuntary accomplice of your repeated suicidal acts, which have been ineffectual so far, not through your fault, but because God intends you to go on living, for His greater glory and your own. May His will be done. Amen.
J.
