After dinner.
I have heard the children’s lessons, and been obliged to punish your protégée, Claire, who is the laziest and idlest of all the pupils. I have just read your poem to Madame Lanvin; she was deeply moved. The poor thing understands you, therefore I need not explain that she loves you. Good-night, until to-morrow, I hope.
I suppose you did not come to-day because you had arrangements to make for our journey; that is why I am able to possess my soul in patience.
J.
Sunday, 4 p.m. (1833).
I have just come in sad and depressed. I suffer, I weep, I wail aloud and moan under my breath, to God and to you. I long to die, that I might put an end once and for all, to this misery and disappointment and sorrow. It really seems as if my happiness had disappeared with the fine weather. It would be folly to expect to see either again. The season is too far advanced for fine weather or for happy days. You poor silly, who wonder that I should deplore so bitterly the loss of one day’s happiness, it is easy to see that you had not to wait for the privilege of loving and being loved till you were twenty-six years old! You poet, who wrote Les Feuilles d’Automne in an atmosphere of love, laughter of children, eyes azure and black, locks brown and gold, happiness in full measure! You have had no cause to notice how one day of gloom and rain, like this, can make the greenest of leaves wither and fall to the ground. You cannot therefore know how twenty-four hours robbed of bliss can undermine one’s self-confidence and strength for the future. It is evident that you do not, for you wonder when I weep; you are almost annoyed at my grief. You see, therefore, that you do not realise the measure of my devotion. Surely I have good reason for regretting that I love you so ardently, when I see that love uncalled for and unwelcome! Oh, yes, I love you, it is true! I love you in spite of myself, in spite of you, in spite of the whole world, in spite of God, in spite even of the Devil, who mixes himself up in it.
I love you, I love you, I love you, happy or unhappy, merry or sad. I love you! Do with me what you will, I still shall love you.
J.
Monday, 1.50 a.m., 1833.
I have been standing at the window all this time, my soul stretched towards you, my ear attentive to every sound, fearing always lest your courage should fail you before the end of your weary walk. It is half an hour since you left; I have listened hard, but no sound has reached me that could make me apprehend you had not the strength to reach your own house. I trust that while I am penning these lines, you are already experiencing the relief that bed and repose will bring to your suffering. No words of mine can suffice to express to you my regret, my sorrow, my despair, for what happened to-night. I do not acquit you altogether of guilt, but I ask you to pardon your own, as well as mine. Forgive me for having yielded to you after what had passed between us. I ought to have foreseen what would happen, and what did happen. God knows, I had resisted as long as I could, and had given way only upon the solemn promise you made me, never to refer to the stains of my former life, so long as my conduct towards you should remain honest and pure.